What is Title 42 and what does it mean for immigration at the southern border?

President Joe Biden visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday for the first time as president, amid controversy and backlash about the administration’s allocation of resources to the southern border. The visit came days after he announced a new, restrictive policy that would essentially expand an immigration program referred to as Title 42, despite promising to end the program when he ran for office.Title 42 was created to address public health and social welfare and grants the government the ability to take emergency action in numerous ways, including to “stop the introduction of communicable diseases.”

While the code has been in place for decades, it was used widely beginning in March 2020 by the administration of then-President Donald Trump in order to regulate border crossings under the premise of increased COVID-19 precautions.

The Trump administration used Title 42 to “essentially to override immigration law that allowed people to ask for asylum after entering illegally and said we could send them back” across the border, arguing that taking migrants into custody in federal facilities would create more of a public health risk, Theresa Cardinal Brown with the Bipartisan Policy Center told the PBS NewsHour’s Nicole Ellis in a conversation.

This video was produced by Casey Kuhn, Nicole Ellis, Yasmeen Alamiri and Julia Griffin. Video and photos by Reuters and the Associated Press.

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