FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 4, 2022
Government Accountability Project Applauds the Biden Administration’s Responsible Immigration Policy Changes
The end of Title 42 and requirement of vaccinating detained migrants marks an improvement in the treatment of detainees.
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration last week officially announced its plans to end the use of Title 42 and to begin requiring coronavirus vaccinations for adult migrants being held at the border. Both announcements come a year after our clients and Department of Homeland Security medical subject matter experts in detention health, Drs. Scott Allen, Pamela McPherson, and Josiah “Jody” Rich, released protected whistleblower disclosures decrying the use of Title 42 as unwarranted on public health grounds and as a driver of child separation and detention, as well as calling for vaccine and boosters to be supplied in immigration detention settings to protect immigrants, workers, and the public from the spread of COVD-19.
Title 42 was a Trump-era border policy issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), continued by the Biden administration, that denied entry to asylum seekers and expelled those seeking protection from persecution and torture under the guise of a pandemic response. Title 42 faced widespread criticism from public health experts that the CDC did not have a legitimate basis for its implementation. In May of 2021, Drs. Allen and McPherson submitted a whistleblower disclosure to Congress raising concerns about the substantial danger to the health and safety of immigrant children the policy posed. In the disclosure, they detailed how family separation—a de facto result of an exception to Title 42 that allowed entry to unaccompanied minors—and detention is well established as harmful and unnecessary.
Drs. Allen and McPherson noted that Title 42 drove enormous numbers of children into detention settings, first into DHS custody at the border, and then into Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) custody, for which the Biden administration constructed enormous Emergency Intake Sites (EIS) to house thousands of children. Other Government Accountability Project clients who served as federal detailees at the EISs blew the whistle in the summer of 2021 on the neglectful, dangerous conditions and mismanagement they witnessed most dramatically at the Fort Bliss EIS near El Paso, Texas.
With the rolling back of Title 42 and an expected increase in asylum seekers once again seeking entry to the United States, the Biden administration has also mandated vaccines be required in detention centers for adults, which comes over a year after Drs. Allen and Rich urged the Department of Homeland Security multiple times throughout the coronavirus pandemic to take action against the spread of COVID-19 to protect detained people, workers, and the public.
Government Accountability Project praises these changes but recognizes there is still significant work to be done to ensure that the problems identified by our whistleblower clients are corrected to prevent harm to those held in immigration custody, and to ensure that implementing reasonable measures to protect against the spread of COVID-19 in immigration detention settings remains a public health priority.
Government Accountability Project Senior Counsel Dana Gold commented:
“While we praise the Biden administration for finally rescinding the unnecessary order under Title 42 and implementing real public health measures through vaccine provision, thousands of lives have been negatively impacted by the failure to heed our whistleblower clients’ early warnings. The administration’s announcements about its new public health plan at the border prove the merit of what our clients called for a year ago. We urge the administration to consult with its own medical experts in detention health to implement a safe and effective rollback of Title 42 that protects immigrants, workers and local communities.”
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Contact: Andrew Harman, Communications Director
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (202) 926-3304
Government Accountability Project
Government Accountability Project is the nation’s leading whistleblower protection organization. Through litigating whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reforms, Government Accountability Project’s mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability. Founded in 1977, Government Accountability Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.