The Title 42 furore highlights America’s broken immigration system

When your rivals start offering their sympathies, you know you’re in trouble. Recently, this has been happening to Henry Cuellar, a Democratic congressman representing Laredo in south Texas, because of the Biden administration’s move to end “Title 42”, a border-management tool. “I’ve talked to a lot of Republicans, and they said, ‘We cannot believe, Henry, that the White House has given us our narrative’,” he says. (Mr Cuellar was in a tough primary election on May 24th, with border policy an animating issue.) The White House’s hope of lifting Title 42 from May 23rd played into the idea that Democrats are stoking disorder at the border.

Title 42 is a public-health rule invoked in March 2020 by Donald Trump’s administration to combat the spread of covid-19. It aimed to seal America’s borders from migrants, allowing the immediate expulsion of border-crossers, including asylum-seekers. The policy has been used in nearly 1.9m instances. Under Title 42, Customs and Border Patrol (cbp) can rapidly expel certain migrants to Mexico, instead of putting them through formal deportation proceedings. President Joe Biden has had to balance concern over rising numbers of migrants with his desire to create a more humane immigration system and honour the legal right of people to seek asylum.