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Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border

April 26, 2024 (1 min read)

Muzaffar Chishti, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, and Julian Montalvo, MPI, Apr. 25, 2024

"This article provides an overview of the scale, impact, and effectiveness of Title 42, ahead of the one-year anniversary of the order’s lifting in May 2023. While Title 42 was just one of many landmark and wide-ranging immigration restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, the public-health authority was both larger in scale and represented a more emblematic shift away from the United States’ historical openness to people seeking refuge. Continued into the Biden administration, which ultimately carried out more expulsions than the Trump administration, Title 42’s usage reframed the scope of border enforcement."

  • Muzaffar Chishti is an MPI Senior Fellow and Director of the MPI office at New York University School of Law.

  • Kathleen Bush-Joseph is a lawyer and Policy Analyst with MPI's U.S. Immigration Policy Program.

  • Julian Montalvo is a Research Intern with MPI's U.S. Immigration Policy Program. He holds a bachelor's degree in government and philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include the consequences of immigration and border policy on the U.S.-Mexico border region, such as border policing, immigration attitudes, and border politics.