For two years, under a policy known as Title 42, the US government has used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to close its southern border to asylum seekers. This devastating policy has exposed highly vulnerable people to more violence and danger.
Title 42—invoked by the Trump administration in March 2020 and repeatedly extended by the Biden administration—allows the blocking and rapid expulsion of people seeking protection at the US border. The policy has been used to authorize over 1.7 million expulsions from the US to dangerous cities along the US-Mexico border and to countries of origin including Haiti, Brazil, and Colombia. In Mexico people seeking safety are abandoned with limited access to shelter and basic services and at constant threat of violence and extortion at the hands of criminal gangs or local police.
Every day, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Mexico witness the threats and fear that asylum seekers and migrants face due to this policy. For two years MSF and numerous medical experts have repeatedly stated this fact: there is no legitimate public health justification for Title 42. It is a xenophobic policy disguised as public health protection that does nothing but put vulnerable people in harm’s way. There is no excuse for continuing to misuse the order to turn away asylum seekers and block their right to seek protection. The Biden administration must end Title 42 immediately.
Below are testimonies from people recently expelled from the United States under Title 42 who are now stranded in Piedras Negras, along the US-Mexico border.