Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump-Era Title 42 Border Expulsion Policy

On a Tuesday in mid-November, a federal judge in Washington dismantled one of the Trump administration's most consequential immigration policies—a rule that had allowed border officials to expel migrants without hearing their asylum claims, justified by pandemic concerns that the judge found largely baseless.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan vacated the order known as Title 42, which had been in place since March 2020. The ruling took effect immediately, restoring asylum seekers' right to request protection at the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in nearly three years. Sullivan found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had issued the order arbitrarily, without solid evidence that it protected public health, and with full knowledge that it would send migrants to places where they faced documented risks of persecution, torture, violent assault, and rape. "It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take," Sullivan wrote. The judge refused to stay his order pending appeal, leaving that decision to higher courts if the Biden administration chose to fight.

The scale of what Title 42 had accomplished was staggering. Since the Trump administration issued it in March 2020, federal officials had carried out more than 2.4 million expulsions, the vast majority under President Biden as migrant arrivals surged. In October alone, officers made more than 230,600 arrests at the southern border and expelled more than 78,400 people without giving them a chance to plead their cases. The evidence Sullivan examined told a damning story about the policy's actual purpose. During the first seven months Title 42 was in effect, Customs and Border Protection found an average of one migrant per day who tested positive for COVID. When the Biden administration extended the order in August 2021, the daily case rate in the United States was nearly double that of Mexico. Sullivan noted that the government never proved migrants posed a meaningful COVID risk to the country.

The ruling came at a moment of acute tension within the Biden administration. The president had campaigned on restoring asylum access and had rolled back several Trump immigration restrictions, yet he had clung to Title 42 as apprehensions at the border reached historic levels. Biden officials had long feared a mass rush to the border that might create another crisis like the one in Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021, when thousands of migrants overwhelmed agents and created a sprawling encampment on the Rio Grande's banks. The timing was also awkward: Chris Magnus, the top border official, had just resigned under pressure after clashing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security offered no immediate response to Sullivan's decision.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the lawsuit on behalf of migrants, called the ruling a watershed moment. "Title 42 unfortunately had a long shelf life but has finally been ended, and that will mean enormous relief to desperate asylum seekers," said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt. Sullivan's decision to vacate the policy meant it ended for all migrants—families, adults traveling alone, everyone. The judge had previously issued rulings blocking expulsions of migrant families and unaccompanied minors, though appeals courts had partly overturned him. The Biden administration had stopped expelling unaccompanied minors but had returned more than 1.5 million other migrants under Title 42.

An October House report had documented how the Trump White House had "brazenly interfered" with the CDC to achieve its political goals, effectively using Title 42 as a tool to close the southern border under the cover of pandemic mitigation. The irony was sharp: while the former president downplayed the virus as it killed more than a million Americans, his administration weaponized public health authority to restrict asylum. Sullivan's ruling made clear that the CDC order had never been justified on the merits.

The Biden administration was unlikely to appeal. The CDC itself had agreed in April that Title 42 was unnecessary given lower COVID transmission, the availability of masks and vaccines, and other protective measures. The agency had tried to lift the order in May. A federal judge in Louisiana had temporarily blocked that effort after Republicans in Texas and 23 other states sued, arguing the administration had failed to consider the fiscal impact on their budgets. Sullivan's ruling rendered that lawsuit moot by declaring the CDC should never have issued the order in the first place.

What came next was uncertain. The Department of Homeland Security said it planned to process migrants' cases quickly, granting protection to those who qualified and deporting those who did not. But the system was already strained. Last fiscal year, border officials apprehended more than 2.3 million migrants along the Mexico border—more than 1.6 million adults, 560,600 families, and 152,000 unaccompanied minors, an all-time high for that last group. In the past, such surges had led the department to release large numbers of migrants into border cities and towns as they awaited immigration court hearings that could take months or years. Republican governors, frustrated by the influx, had begun busing migrants to northern cities. The question now was whether the Biden administration could manage the transition without repeating the chaos of Del Rio, and whether the asylum system itself could absorb the demand.