The national Border Patrol union president and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) head aren’t happy with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) decision to end Title 42 effective May 23, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that the decision will open the floodgates for unprecedented migration numbers.
The order, which is known as Title 42, was put in place in March 2020 by the Trump administration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Border authorities have returned over 1.7 million migrants since the order began, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). (RELATED: CDC Announces Title 42 Will End May 23)
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told the DCNF agents will now process all migrants under Title 8, leaving them to await court dates he said they often don’t show up to.
“Once we process them under Title 8, now everybody is going to be released. So we’re releasing 100,000 right now. Well, with Title 42 going away, we’ll be releasing the total number of the people that we catch,” Judd said.
Former acting ICE Director Tom Homan shared worries similar to Judd’s, telling the DCNF that unprecedented numbers of migrants will cross the border as soon as the lifting of the order takes effect.
“Border Patrol has already encountered over one million people illegally entering our country and the fiscal year is half over,” Homan said. “Based on the current glide slope numbers, they will encounter more than two million people this year, which will eclipse last year’s historic immigration crisis. With the end of Title 42, we will see numbers like we never have seen in the past.”
Homan said the Biden administration “has destroyed our operational control of our southern border” and “made our country less secure and more dangerous.”
“The criminal cartels control the border and that should scare every American,” he said. (RELATED: What Will It Mean For The Border If Biden Ends The Immediate Expulsion Of Migrants?)
The CDC told the DCNF that it is giving DHS time to prepare to use Title 8, to expel migrants deemed inadmissible and to work on its COVID-19 vaccination program.
BREAKING — CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issues a new order terminating the Title 42 order that has allowed U.S. border officials to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants, saying the policy is no longer needed to protect public health.https://t.co/RcwkjC1msE pic.twitter.com/megSyFnA2Y
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) April 1, 2022
“After considering current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19 (such as highly effective vaccines and therapeutics), the CDC Director has determined that an Order suspending the right to introduce migrants into the United States is no longer necessary,” the CDC said in a statement to the DCNF.
“With CDC’s assistance and guidance, DHS has and will implement additional COVID-19 mitigation procedures. These measures, along with the current public health landscape where 97.1% of the U.S. population lives in a county identified as having ‘low’ COVID-19 Community Level, will sufficiently mitigate the COVID-19 risk for U.S. communities,” it added.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.