A judge earlier said the arbitrary deportation order was illegal in a decision welcomed by rights groups.
A judge in the United States has given President Joe Biden’s administration five weeks to reverse policies that have led authorities to deport thousands of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border with Mexico.
The government filed an uncontested motion seeking the delay late Tuesday, just hours after U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan in a 49-page ruling said Title 42 is a “vain and frivolous” policy that violates federal law.
“This transition period is necessary to ensure this [the Department of Homeland Security, DHS] “He can continue to fulfill his mission of protecting the country’s borders and carrying out his duties at the border in an orderly manner,” wrote state lawyers.
In other words, DHS said it needs five weeks to “plan an orderly transition” at the border. “The United States will continue to enforce our immigration laws at our borders,” the department said.
On Wednesday morning, Sullivan said he was accepting the management’s request with “GREAT CONFIDENCE”. He he added that his order suspending the deportation order will take effect at midnight on December 21.
Human rights activists welcomed the judge’s decision on Chapter 42, which has been widely criticized as a violation of international and US law that puts asylum seekers and refugees at risk.
More than 2.3 million Title 42 people have been removed from the US-Mexico border since the policy was first implemented under former President Donald Trump in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a US government study. Most of those removed were repeat offenders.
The Trump administration insisted that Title 42 was necessary to stop the spread of the virus, but experts said it was a continuation of the former Republican president’s hard-line, anti-immigrant policies.
The law allowed US border officials to deport many asylum seekers without giving them a chance to apply for asylum.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who led the Title 42 ruling, welcomed the judge’s decision as “a huge victory and one that is about life and death”.
“We have been saying that the use of Title 42 against immigrants was inhumane and driven by politics. We believe that this decision will put an end to this terrible policy once and for all,” Gelernt said in a statement on Tuesday.
When the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first issued Title 42, the public health agency said in April that it was no longer needed to stop the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration also said it plans to drop the plan after a month.
But a federal judge in Louisiana ruled in May that the Biden administration could not do so after two US states sued. He also said that due consideration was not given to the increase in border arrivals if Article 42 was repealed.
The ban has been enforced inconsistently by country, falling mainly on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – in addition to Mexicans – because Mexico allows them to be deported from the US.
Last month, the Biden administration extended Title 42 to Venezuelans after Mexico agreed to return them to the border under Title 42, raising concerns and fears that a new crisis is looming.
In his ruling Tuesday, Sullivan said officials failed to consider how asylum seekers might be affected by other options.
Officials knew that the implementation of the law would lead to people being deported to places where there is a “great chance” of “harassment, harassment, abuse, or rape”, they wrote.
Diana Kearney, Oxfam America’s senior legal adviser, said the judge’s decision “ends a discriminatory and illegal policy that put the lives of children, women, and vulnerable men on the political altar”.
“While nothing will stop the incredible violence that millions of refugees have endured under these brutal and flawed policies, we welcome the new opportunity for the United States to provide protection for refugees and restore respect for the rule of law,” Kearney said. .
