ATLANTA — Unaccompanied migrant children trying to enter the United States will no longer be denied the chance to apply for asylum under new guidelines announced by U.S. health officials.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announcing the change Friday night, said “removal of unaccompanied noncitizen children is not justified to protect public health.”
The change was announced shortly before a court order went into effect that would have allowed the Biden administration to remove unaccompanied children seeking asylum under the authority of Title 42, which was introduced in March 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID. -19. The order remains in effect for adults and families traveling with children.
Testing and other preventative measures allow children traveling alone to be released to sponsors in the United States, the CDC said. Sponsors are often family members or other close relatives.
A federal judge ruled in a lawsuit from the state of Texas that the CDC failed to explain why children traveling alone were exempt from Title 42 and gave the government a week to appeal. Instead, the CDC lifted the order, but only for unaccompanied children.
Immigrants have been removed more than 1.6 million times under Title 42, named for a 1944 public health law. Biden kept the order in place, but exempted unaccompanied children during his first days in office. .
Leading Democrats and advocacy groups have been pushing to end Title 42 for all immigrants. “Not a humane or effective solution to secure our border,” US Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, tweeted Friday.
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