Sen. Grassley
The Biden administration plans to rescind the Trump-era public health order known at Title 42, a move Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says will make the situation at America’s southern border far worse.
Title 42 was enacted in 2020 to keep migrants and those seeking asylum from entering the U.S. due to the pandemic. The CDC says the measure is no longer needed from a public health standpoint.
Grassley, a Republican, says, “Title 42 has helped keep our country safe and stem the flow of illegal immigration into our country over the last two years.”
Grassley is calling on Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, to open a hearing about the potential consequences at the southern border if Title 42 is abolished, as planned, in about a month.
Grassley says, “I’ve asked Chairman Durbin, of my Judiciary Committee, to bring Department of Homeland Security officials in to testify about how they plan to handle the surge that some people have estimated would go from the present five to six thousand a day, all the way up to 18,000 a day.”
It’s not a partisan issue, Grassley says, noting several prominent Democrats have warned rescinding the order will likely exacerbate troubles on the U.S. border with Mexico. “The border is already in crisis,” Grassley says, “and our immigration enforcement officers are really overwhelmed, without a detailed plan to address this crisis caused by the president not enforcing our laws that simply say, you can’t come to our country without our permission.”
In Grassley’s letter to Durbin, he said: “U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz recently stated that there are already approximately 7,000 encounters per day with illegal immigrants crossing the border, and that the number of encounters is likely to pass the 1 million mark for the first 6 months of FY2022 alone.”
The Biden administration plans to rescind the order on May 23rd.