thebigp

Title 42 expulsions single out asylum seekers crossing into the United States at land borders—who are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and Latino, particularly from Central America, Africa, and Haiti —for discriminatory treatment while thousands of other travelers are able to cross the border without any health screenings.
Indeed, the policy fulfills former President Trump’s expressed desire to stop providing protections for migrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries, which he referred to as “shithole countries.” In the same meeting, he suggested the United States should instead try to bring more migrants from countries like Norway, a predominantly white country.
Under Title 42, Black, brown, and Indigenous asylum seekers are being expelled to the countries where they fled persecution and torture or sent to dangerous border regions of Mexico, where they face discrimination and violence. DHS has expelled over one thousand Haitian migrants, including asylum seekers, to Haiti despite an internal DHS report finding that they “may face harm upon return to Haiti” due to political instability and violence.
Though the Title 42 Order is perhaps the most egregious example of US public health officials misusing their authority to help create discriminatory immigration policies, the US has a long history of using public health as a front to restrict or block non-white immigrants and asylum seekers.
In the last century, the US Public Health Service (PHS), of which the CDC today is a part, engaged in controversial and unethical experiments and forced treatment at the border that disproportionally targeted non-white immigrants and Black US citizens, based on “prevailing racial and class stereotypes.”
White supremacist eugenicists and others in the anti-immigrant movement have long used the language of disease and contagion to refer to non-white immigrants in an effort to pass immigration laws that have sought to limit their arrival.
For example, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the disease was unfairly associated with Haitian and African asylum seekers. The United States later amended immigration law to bar individuals who were HIV positive from immigrating to the United States.
Immigration authorities cited public health concerns related to the spread of AIDS to explain why Haitian asylum seekers were detained for long periods of time at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The program was overseen by then-Attorney General William Barr, who later offered a defense of the policy that had nothing to do with public health: “You want 80,000 Haitians to descend on Florida several months before the election? Come on, give me a break."
Haitian asylum seekers are now once again being detained for several days or weeks in unsanitary and abusive conditions where they often lack translation services that would allow them to request medical treatment or asylum before being expelled from the United States.
Each day the Biden administration continues unlawful expulsions is another day it is enforcing racist immigration policies. After Biden took office, ICE told Haitian government officials to expect an increase in the number of deportation and expulsion flights. More Haitians were expelled in the first weeks of the Biden administration than during all of Fiscal Year 2020, according to a recent report co-authored by the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the UndocuBlack Network, and the Quixote Center. Since then, administration officials have made no commitments to reduce deportation and expulsion flights, despite concerns raised in numerous meetings with migrant rights groups, including Human Rights Watch.
How should the US be protecting public health with respect to asylum seekers?
Best practices rooted in scientific evidence and best public health practices include using personal protective equipment, frequent testing, and social distancing, and ensuring asylum seekers and migrants have adequate shelter where they can maintain social distance and access medical care, food, water, and other necessities. Most already have family or friends in the United States with whom they can safely shelter in place.
DHS should coordinate closely with shelter networks when releasing asylum seekers to ensure the transportation process is as safe and orderly as possible. Those community-based organizations, faith-based groups, and other nongovernmental organizations have been leading the way in humanitarian reception, providing simple responses to people in need—cooking food, providing access to medical care, and ensuring babies have diapers.
A coordinated approach with those existing networks and dedicating more federal resources for their use could harness these community initiatives to meet asylum seekers’ basic needs while their claims are processed.
The US government should respond to people arriving at the border in a fair, efficient, and rights-respecting manner that also protects public health by ending summary expulsion and return, building out a humanitarian reception system, implementing public health measures to limit the spread of Covid-19, providing sufficient resources and structural reforms to process asylum claims fairly and efficiently, and acting quickly to address border agency impunity.

Iliamna1

Excuse me, but the USA tkes in more immigrants seeking asylum and otherwise than any other nation in the worid. How about some of those other nations doinkg their fair share?

American Vet

Why not just completely seal the border and let those wishing to immigrate FOLLOW THE LAW and apply through the appropriate channels?

Redangel62

What a novel idea!!!

DamnYANKEE

Michael Rich Loc: Lapine Oregon

Seems that the last President had something like that in mind.

WEBCO

They aren't seeking asylum, they are seeking economic opportunities. Why not bring immigrants into our country that share our values, western culture, and would benefit the country?

Shouldn't our immigration policy be a benefit to the country, and not a financial burden?