The ruling means further delays for thousands of people waiting for a chance to seek refuge in the United States, but it averts a potential crisis on the border by giving the administration more time to roll out its plan to handle the large numbers that are expected. Department of Homeland Security officials have said they were preparing for as many as 18,000 migrants a day, compared with 8,000 currently, if the order were lifted.
“The Biden administration is probably breathing a sigh of relief because they weren’t ready for the rule to be lifted,” said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
The sweeping public health measure, known as Title 42, was put into place in March 2020 to control the transmission of the coronavirus across the border. Under its authority, thousands of migrants arriving at land borders have been swiftly expelled, without an opportunity for those fleeing danger and persecution to request humanitarian protection in the United States.
But since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in April that it would suspend the order, citing the availability of effective vaccines to combat the coronavirus, concern has shifted to the potential for overcrowding and turmoil at the border should Title 42 expulsions no longer be enforced.
Judge Robert R. Summerhays of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a nationwide preliminary injunction directing the administration to keep the rule in place for now, effectively postponing what would almost certainly be tens of thousands of new migrant admissions.
Even with the public health order in place, U.S. Border Patrol agents are encountering near-record numbers of people who either crossed on their own or were allowed to enter under various Title 42 exemptions. A total of 234,088 migrants crossed the southern border in April.
Twenty-four states, led by Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri, sued on April 3, two days after the C.D.C. announcement lifting the public health order, arguing that Title 42’s continued enforcement was needed to avert the threat of a “wave of illegal migration and drug trafficking” and that returning to normal enforcement practices would cause irreparable harm.
In a 47-page decision, Judge Summerhays, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, whose administration initially adopted the public health order, found that lifting the order would cause irreparable harm by increasing the health care and education costs that the states would have to bear as a result of the arrival of a large number of new migrants. And the judge ruled that the states were likely to succeed in their argument that the C.D.C. had not followed proper rule-making procedures under federal law.
“The court concludes that the public interest would be served by a preliminary injunction preventing the termination of the C.D.C.’s Title 42 orders,” the judge wrote.
At the Border: With 8,200 crossings daily, shelters and other way stations to house and feed migrants have become central to the government’s response plan.
Asylum Seekers: After a pandemic-era pause, the Biden administration will soon allow a small number of migrants at the border to ask for asylum.
A New Wave: Cuban migrants are arriving to the United States in the highest numbers in four decades, as the conditions on the island grow more desperate.
Documented Youths: Children of temporary visa holders risk losing their legal status in the United States when they turn 21. Some are joining calls for an immigration overhaul.
Republican state leaders praised the decision. “The federal court stepped in to protect our nation when the Biden administration failed to do so,” Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona said in a statement on Twitter.
But some legal analysts said the ruling left the federal government unable to comply with its legal obligations under both U.S. and international law to offer asylum to migrants who meet the standards under the law.
The injunction “will continue to imperil lives and block access to the asylum system,” said Monika Y. Langarica, a staff attorney at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling, and the Biden administration said it would continue to enforce the expulsions pending the outcome. “The authority to set public health policy nationally should rest with the Centers for Disease Control, not with a single District Court,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.
Government lawyers had argued in court that the C.D.C. had determined that Title 42 authority was no longer warranted, and that forcing the government to enforce the policy amounted to an intrusion on the agency’s handling of the pandemic.