Biden's first 100-day accomplishment has been the deportation of 300,000 migrants and refugees since January, largely using a illegal under international law policy called Title 42.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) explained earlier this month:
"The Title 42 expulsion policy has effectively closed the U.S. border to nearly all asylum seekers based on the misapplication of an obscure, 75-year-old public health law." It continued, "That law, the Public Health Service Act of 1944, was designed to confer quarantine authority to health authorities that would apply to everyone, including U.S. citizens, arriving from a foreign country. Quarantine authority was never meant to be used to determine which noncitizens could or couldn't be expelled or removed from the U.S."
According to a report (pdf) released late last month by the Haitian Bridge Alliance and other advocacy groups, the Biden administration used Title 42 to deport more Haitians during its first weeks in power than the Trump administration did in all of Fiscal Year 2020.
Cynthia Garcia of United We Dream stressed, "President Biden and the Department of Homeland Security must be reminded that their inaction to protect vulnerable immigrant communities seeking refuge in the U.S. is not only putting lives on the line; it upholds a white nationalist immigration system that seeks to expel and keep Black and brown immigrants out at any cost."
Garcia continued, "Reflecting on his time as vice president, President Biden acknowledged that the Obama administration was wrong in deporting over 2.5 million people and vowed to never make that mistake again when he took office. President Biden is well on track to repeat history. Now, he must make a choice: repeat the mistakes of the Obama administration or do everything in his power to end the cruelty of detentions, expulsions, and deportations and show that he is a president of his word."
National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), a coalition of more than 40 immigrant and refugee rights organizations, echoed United We Dream's concerns about continued mass deportations during the first 100 days of the Biden administration.
NPNA noted that "there are many changes that the Biden administration can pursue with little to no congressional action, including ending the use of Title 42 expulsions, redesignating [Temporary Protected Status] for Haiti and other countries that are set to expire, and increasing the number of refugees that the U.S. will resettle as part of the presidential determination."
The group also said, "These are literally life or death decisions that will impact millions of lives. The administration can also take action to expand access to citizenship and justice and to bolster due process protections through an increase of legal representation for those in detention and removal proceedings."
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