Motion to end Title 42 in California and New Mexico denied

SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — As 24 states pushed a Louisiana judge to keep Title 42 indefinitely, a lawyer from Southern California stood in court making a motion to let it expire in some parts of the border.

Attorney Monika Langarica, who filed the motion on behalf of a Salvadoran migrant named Alicia, claimed Title 42 is harming her client as well as other migrants stuck in the city of Tijuana.

She argued that if Title 42 remains in place, it should not apply in border states that are not part of the lawsuit, specifically California and New Mexico.

Langarica, who works for the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, is also representing a group called Immigration Law Lab, which aims to protect the rights of migrants and other individuals in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Washington and Mexico.

“Arizona and Texas seek a nationwide injunction that would prevent the Biden administration from termination of Title 42 not just in Arizona and Texas, but along the entire southern border,” Langarica said during a news conference via Zoom from outside the courthouse in Lafayette, Louisiana.

While Judge Robert R. Summerhays of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana did not issue a final ruling on Title 42, he did deny Langarica’s motion to restrict the order to only Arizona and Texas and not California and New Mexico.

“We are disappointed the judge denied the motion to intervene,” said Langarica. “Arizona and Texas are two of the most hostile anti-immigrant states and should not be dictating immigration policy for the whole border or whole nation.”

Acting on a health directive ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Title 42 was instituted at the beginning of the pandemic by the Trump administration.

The idea was to keep migrants out of the country in case they were carriers of COVID-19, a theory that was never supported by most in the medical and health industries.

Since then, the CDC has removed its order.

On April 1, President Biden ruled Title 42 would go away on May 23, but Arizona, Texas and Missouri filed suit keep it in place.

Soon 21 other states joined in the lawsuit.

Days later, Summerhays issued a temporary restraining order to keep Title 42 as is.

The order forces U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and agents to expel migrants almost immediately after being apprehended for crossing the border illegally.

The quick expulsions mean migrants don’t have enough time to ask for asylum.