JUST IN: Chief Justice Roberts Temporarily Blocks Title 42 From Expiring As Border Crisis Mounts
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42, a Covid-era policy that allows the Department of Homeland Security to quickly deport migrants caught at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Roberts ruled at the request of 19 Republican attorneys general, led by those in Arizona and Louisiana who Monday “asked the Supreme Court to act after a federal appeals court on Friday declined to put on hold a judge’s ruling last month that invalidated an emergency order known as Title 42. The policy is set to expire Wednesday,” reported Reuters.
CNN’s Jake Tapper broke to news on-air. “All right. I want to bring in CNN’s Ed Lavandera into the conversation. Ed, you’re at the border, and this is a humanitarian crisis you’ve been describing for weeks. Shelters are already overflowing. Do you think the Supreme Court keeping Title 42 in place, at least for now, will have any impact on what’s going on there?” Tapper asked.
“Well, there are still a steady flow of people crossing the border here, regardless of what is going on with Title 42. So on this side, there are still a large sized number of people here in the El Paso area who are still being released. So that doesn’t really weaken the pressure on the shelters and the churches that have been housing many of these migrants here in the El Paso area,” replied Lavandera, adding:
But, Jake, as this news was breaking, I was literally in the middle of an interview with a gentleman named Ruben Garcia. And Ruben is one of the, if not the most well-known advocate for migrants here in the El Paso area. He has worked for decades and runs a shelter called the Annunciation House.
He is the most prominent person involved in helping migrants and an advocate for the shelters and the churches here in the El Paso area. And as we sat down to do the interview, we were essentially giving him the breaking news about what was happening. And his reaction was simply, this is like they have known for a month that this judge had ordered this all of this last minute.
“So you can really sense this sense of frustration and exasperation that so many leaders in Washington have had time to figure out what to do with all of this. But all of this always seemingly coming down to the very last moment in the days. And these are shelters that are trying to plan as far ahead as they can. And right now, they’re just trying to keep their heads above water, waking up every day, trying to figure out how much bed space and shelter space is available in the city,” Lavandera concluded.
Watch the full clip above via CNN
