Title 42 Set to Expire as U.S. Border Crisis Continues

Title 42 – a pandemic-era public health provision that allows for the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants detained at the U.S. Southern Border – is set to expire on May 11, 2023.

Though the U.S. has experienced a dramatic surge in illegal immigrants attempting to cross the southern border over the past two years, some experts are warning that the crisis could worse after Title 42 expires.

Title 42 is a section of Public Health Service Act of 1944 which authorizes the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to quickly expel illegal immigrants originating from countries where there is a communicable disease that would place the public health in danger.

CDC Director Robert Redfield first implemented Title 42 on March 20, 2020, in response to the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19.

On April 1, 2023, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issued a Public Health Determination ordering the end of the use of Title 42; set to take effect on May 23, 2022.

However, following the announcement, a group of attorneys general from red states sued the Biden administration to keep Title 42 in place. U.S. district judge Robert Summerhays agreed with the attorneys general, and ruled on May 20, 2022 that the Administration had to keep Title 42 in place.

Now, Title 42 is set to expire on May 11, after the president signed a bill on April 10, 2023 ending the COVID-19 national emergency.

Over 2 million illegal immigrants have been expelled under Title 42 in just three years. As The Heritage Foundation notes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expelled 1,071,075 immigrants under Title 42 in 2021, and an additional 1,103,966 in 2022.

“Predictions are that the current, unsustainable daily encounters at the border will double or more, to 10,000 and more,” Simon Hankinson, Senior Research Fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, writes. “Thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico and all the way down to the Darien Gap in Panama to swarm our open border.”

Though these predictions are for the future, it’s also important to remember that the U.S. Southern Border is experiencing a years-long wave of illegal immigration already.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), from 2020 to 2022, encounters along the U.S. Southern Border surged by 419%.

Whereas CBP encountered 258,088 illegal immigrants in 2020, that number skyrocketed to 1,734,686 in 2021 and 2,378,944 in 2022.

Photo Credit: U.S. CBP

So far, 2023 has outpaced 2022 in number of border encounters, with CBP encountering 1,223,067 illegal immigrants along the Southern Border in the first six months of this fiscal year.

These numbers are breathtaking.

And though its often underreported, one of the main victims of illegal immigration, are the illegal immigrants themselves. Open immigration is not compassionate.

As the Daily Citizen has previously noted, “According to Amnesty International, as many as 60% of migrant women and girls are raped on the journey north.

“And a 2018 government study found that along their journey, children face the risks of ‘exploitation, violence and death.’ It is estimated that between 75-80% of newly arriving unaccompanied children are victims of human trafficking, as they travel into the U.S. with smugglers who then sell them into forced labor or prostitution,’ the study said.”

Each person is made in the image and likeness of God. A secure and competently run Southern Border would go a long way towards protecting trafficking children and abused women. What is more, a nation ceases to exist without clear, enforced borders.

Let’s pray and advocate for our policymakers and lawmakers to do their job and secure our Southern Border.