Republican senators scrutinize DHS over southern border policies, potential reversal of Title 42

A group of Republican senators wrote the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week to criticize current border policies and urge additional information ahead of a potential revocation of U.S. Title 42.

The senators noted the possible problems a reversal of Title 42 policy, which allows Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to prohibit entry over potential health risks, would pose.

Led by U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (FL), the lawmakers pressed DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to release information on his department’s plans to secure the southern border should Title 42 be rescinded. Title 42 was enacted under the Trump administration, which it used to block land entry for immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden administration has continued the policy.

“The Department should be focused on securing our borders, enforcing all immigration laws, and providing all necessary resources to CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain and remove all who violate our laws,” the senators wrote. “Ensuring our frontline immigration officers have ample resources to secure the southern border is of critical importance – especially if Title 42 is potentially lifted, as reported.”

The 14 senators behind the letter claimed that the policy had been an effective deterrent to illegal border crossings due to eliminating these people’s allowance to remain and move within the United States until immigration proceedings could be concluded. They added that such a reversal “is likely to cause another overwhelming surge of illegal crossings, exacerbating the already massive humanitarian and national security crisis at the southern border.”

The United States has seen periodic cycles of immigration throughout its lifespan. With the high number of border encounters, other factors need to be considered, including economic conditions in Mexico – which bring drops in single adult immigration as they improve – and the current difficulty of actually crossing the border, according to the nonprofit American Immigration Council (AIC) earlier this month.

“Direct comparisons between apprehension numbers in recent years and those occurring decades ago miss a key fact: it is significantly harder to cross the border without detection and apprehension today than it was just a decade ago,” the AIC said. It added the government could and should view the current surge of immigrants as a challenge of humanitarian protection management, not security.

The senators viewed the situation at the border as a national security crisis and called out the Biden administration for record-high illegal crossings. In 2021 alone, they noted, CBP reported 2 million encounters with illegal immigrants and another 154,745 encounters in January 2022.

Building on that, they claimed the administration’s border policies fuel criminal activity, sex trafficking, and other forms of abuse. They asked Mayorkas to report to them on how the DHS is mitigating any expected surges and coordinating with other federal, state, and local agencies to do so; if DHS is providing intelligence to aid state and local law enforcement; if necessary resources and personnel would be expedited to confront any surge in immigration; and whether additional U.S. troops would be called upon to support border patrol agents.