US NEWS: US to abolish COVID order blocking asylum seekers on the border with Mexico

WASHINGTON, April 2 – The United States will end a “repatriation-related deportation policy” that has successfully shut down US asylum on the border with Mexico, U.S. health officials said Friday, saying they no longer needed to protect public health.

The Title 42 order will remain in effect until May 23 to allow border officials time to prepare for its completion and to compile COVID-19 immigration policies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a 30-page order. .

After reviewing current public health conditions and increasing availability of anti-COVID-19 (such as highly effective vaccines and therapies), the CDC Director has ruled that the Order of Immigration in the United States is no longer required. , “the CDC said in a separate statement.

The order was first issued in March 2020 as countries around the world closed their borders amid fears of COVID-19 and more than a million refugees seeking asylum were immediately evacuated under the policy since then.

The official announcement comes after other stores reported details of the program on Wednesday.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has retained Article 42 in his post after taking office in January 2021 despite strong criticism from his political party and his campaign promises to reverse the ban on foreign policy of his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

Leading Democrats, medical experts and the United Nations have criticized Article 42, saying it is evicting immigrants from dangerous areas in Mexico, denying them their legal right to seek asylum and that scientific evidence does not support their stated goal of reducing the spread of the virus.

Republicans rallied in Biden this week, saying removing the borders of the epidemic would encourage more migrants to enter illegally at a time when crossing borders has already broken records.

The Guatemalan government said on Friday it expected the number of Guatemalan people seeking migration to increase after the US government lifted its Title 42 expulsion policy.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) telephonically told reporters on Friday that they had set up additional border crossings to accommodate more migrants and coordinated efforts across the various agencies.

DHS has also rescheduled more than 600 law enforcement officials at the border in anticipation of the changes.

“However, we know that traffickers will spread false information to help vulnerable immigrants,” Home Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “Let me be clear: those who cannot establish a legal basis for residency in the United States will be removed.”

‘WE CANNOT RETURN’

Biden officials introduced a major regulation last week aimed at speeding up the process of sheltering and deportation on the US-Mexico border and scheduled to take effect in late May, near the end of Article 42.

At the same time managers could “hire more expensive” another Trump term of time known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a DHS official said in a statement. The program puts asylum seekers in Mexico awaiting trial in U.S. courts. Biden officials tried to end the MPP but were forced by an American judge to reinstate him.

Several migrants in the nearly 2,000 XNUMX camp in Reynosa, Mexico, who have been waiting at the border for months, told on Thursday that they hoped the order would be lifted so they could apply for asylum in the United States.

Hilda Gonzalez, 34, from Guatemala, has been living in Reynosa camp for eight months with her eight-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

“My plan is to stay here until we get asylum,” said Gonzalez, who did not give a reason for his escape. “It’s better to stay here and sleep on the floor than to go home. If we are there it is because we will not come back.”