Expert: What to Make of Biden's Defense of Title 42?

Nicole Narea, Vox, Jan. 25, 2022

"President Joe Biden’s administration is defending two of his predecessor’s more inhumane immigration policies in court: pandemic-related border restrictions and family separations. The Department of Justice is actively fighting in federal court for border restrictions that have barred most asylum seekers from entering the US. In separate federal cases, it has argued that the policy of separating migrant families under former President Donald Trump was lawful, and has fought against payouts for those families. For the Biden administration, defending some of the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration policies could be an attempt to preserve tools to manage the border, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School. Or, he said, they could mark an internal disagreement on righting the wrongs of the Trump era. “Every administration wants to have as much flexibility and discretion as it can on immigration because you never know what conditions will arise in the future,” he said. Still, it’s a legal strategy that comes as Republicans prepare to make Biden’s immigration record a key line of attack in the upcoming midterms, and amid complaints from immigrants’ rights advocates and progressive Democrats that the president’s not doing enough to dismantle his predecessor’s legacy."