Two Years of Family Separation and Violence: Why Title 42 Must End Immediately
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, D.C., March 20, 2022—In 2021, two brothers, 7 and 15, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border with their mother to seek protection. They fled extreme violence at the hands of their father and were hoping to find safe haven in the United States. Throughout their journey, the brothers and their mother were stalked by their father, making it hard for them to settle anywhere else. Worse yet, when they arrived at our border, immigration authorities turned them away by relying on Title 42, a public health ordinance misused to expel asylum-seekers since 2020. Facing imminent danger in Mexico, the brothers were forced to return to the border alone, without their mother. Their mother remained in Mexico, where she was kidnapped. Once our Child Advocates were appointed to the case, they worked with the boys’ mother and a local nonprofit to persuade the federal government to reunify the family in the United States, but only after the additional traumatization of separation.
Today marks two years since the implementation of Title 42, which has subjected more than a million people to this summary expulsion, which exists nowhere in immigration law. Since 2020, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights has served as independent Child Advocate for dozens of children separated from their parents because of this policy. In 2020, the Young Center identified Title 42 as a tool for family separation and a threat to children’s safety, a recent report from Human Rights First tracked 9,886 reports of kidnapping, rape, torture, and other attacks against asylum-seekers and migrants returned to danger in Mexico under the Biden administration due to the Title 42 policy. To protect their children from these threats, families are forced into the impossible decision of sending them to the U.S. border alone to seek protection as unaccompanied children.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration terminated Title 42 for unaccompanied children—children who arrive at our border without a parent or legal guardian. While a step forward, this change for unaccompanied children fails to protect them if the children who arrive with a parent, who are summarily expelled.
“Title 42 puts children directly in harm’s way, by allowing federal officials to send any child who arrives with a parent right back to the very danger they just fled. No wonder parents then send their children back to the border alone to seek protection. Title 42 continues the horrifying practice of family separation at the very time the Biden administrations’ Family Reunification Task Force is trying to remedy for families separated by the prior administration. Despite a change in leadership, our immigration policies continue to fail children and violate international human rights law, as well as our own,” said Young Center Policy Director Jennifer Nagda.
U.S. refugee and immigration law, and the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to which the United States is party, require our government to guarantee to all people the right to seek asylum in the United States. The Biden administration started its campaign and presidency with the promise of a “humane, modern, and dignified” immigration system. By continuing Title 42, the administration not only betrays that promise but follows the prior administration’s pattern of ignoring humanitarian law. It’s past time for the Biden administration to fulfill its promise and end Title 42 immediately and for all.
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The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is a non-profit organization that protects and advances the rights and best interests of immigrant children and advocates for an immigration system that treats children as children first. For press inquiries, please contact Noorjahan Akbar at media@theyoungcenter.org or 202-725-7184.