federal court in Texas ruled on Friday that the Biden administration cannot continue to exempt unaccompanied children from Section 42, a policy spearheaded by the president Donald Trump which gives US Customs and Border Protection the right to remove migrants from the country in accordance with COVID-19 pandemic.
District Judge for the Northern District of Texas Mark Pittman said the current administration was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated federal administrative law by exempting underage boys and girls who illegally entered the United States from being sent back to the United States. Mexico or their country of origin.
The most recent CBP report on the southwest border showed that U.S. Border Patrol agents intercepted 47,374 unaccompanied minors from October 2021 to early fiscal year 2022.
The number of cases of unaccompanied children fell to 8,777 in January after 11,893 detentions were recorded in December 2021, the last two months for which statistics were available.
The Trump administration enacted a controversial public health executive order in March 2020 through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deeming undocumented migrants approaching the border as a health hazard amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Under Trump, a Republican, at least 400,000 migrants have been denied asylum at the border and deported to Mexico under Section 42, including at least 16,000 unaccompanied minors.
In November 2020, a federal judge ruled to block the application of this policy to children who illegally crossed the border alone, deeming it unreasonable.
This ruling remained in place during the first year of the Biden administration, although Trump’s Democratic successor continued to adhere to the remaining aspects of Section 42.
In total, over 1.2 million people were expelled by the US during Biden’s tenure, mostly single adults, although some families were sometimes denied.
On Friday, a federal judge in Texas ruled that President Joe Biden’s administration can no longer protect unaccompanied migrant children and exempt them from a Trump-era executive order that allows border officials to send illegal immigrants to Mexico or their countries of origin.
Nicaraguan native Wilto Obregon appeared in the video crying and begging a U.S. Border Patrol agent to save him after smugglers abandoned him in Texas on April 1, 2021. The boy was smuggled in with a group of migrants but ended up in the Texas wilderness. . He has since reunited with his father in Miami, although it is not clear if this was under Section 42.
Prior to Friday’s new ruling, following the juvenile’s detention, CBP was given 72 hours to process and hand them over to the Department of Health and Human Services Refugee Settlement Office.
The agency is mandated to place children in state-licensed shelters or with a sponsor, which is usually a family in the United States, where they can go through the asylum or visa process.
Taking the side of Texas Republican lawmakers who were challenging the Biden administration’s decision to exempt unaccompanied minors from Section 42, Judge Pittman ruled that the decision to allow migrant children to remain in the country puts them at risk of spreading the coronavirus.
“Here, the President (arbitrarily) exempted unaccompanied foreign children who tested positive for COVID-19 from Section 42 procedures that were intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” Pittman wrote.
Pittman also agreed with the state’s Republican leaders, who argue that allowing unaccompanied migrant children to stay in Texas increases the financial burden on their school and health care services.
His decision came the same day that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Biden administration could continue to use Section 42 to immediately remove undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border, but could not return them to countries known for their persecution and torture.
Border data filed in Texas federal court this week showed a 14% drop in encounters with undocumented migrants at the southwestern border in January 2022 compared to December 2021.
The Honduran five-year-old girl was discovered by border guard agents on February 10 in Texas. The child was among four children who were greeted together by officers assigned to the Del Rio Sector of the US Border Patrol.
U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio sector found five underage migrant children alone near the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas on February 24. It is unknown if the children are related.
The legitimacy of the controversial measure was challenged by a group of migrants represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other non-profit organizations.
The Court of Appeal ruled that migrants subject to the policy probably “have no right to be in the United States” and that the Biden administration “may expel them immediately.”
It also added that the administration “may not expel aliens to a country where their ‘life or liberty is in danger’ because of their ‘race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’ or ‘into a country.’ where they are likely to be tortured.”
U.S. Border Patrol agents reported 47,383 encounters with unaccompanied migrant children who illegally crossed the Mexico-U.S. border during the first four months of fiscal year 2022.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the decision.
US Border Patrol agents recorded 1,957,133 encounters with migrants stopped at the border during the Biden administration between February 2021 and December 2021.
The number of migrant detentions decreased by 14 percent in January 2022 to 153,941 from 179,219 in December.