Best Post Center: politics

Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Biden Is Expelling Migrants On COVID-19 Grounds, But Health Experts Say That’s All Wrong

<aside class="right-rail__container right-rail__container--ad">
<div class="right-rail__ad__wrapper right-rail__module">
<div class="right-rail__ad" id="right-rail__ad-6105055"></div>
</div>
 
<div class="OUTBRAIN right-rail__outbrain right-rail__module" data-src="https://time.com/6105055/biden-title-42-covid-19/" data-widget-id="SB_2" data-ob-template="timemag"></div>
</aside>
Despite sharp criticism from <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/04/top-state-adviser-leaves-post-title-42-515029" target="_blank">top officials</a> and <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Haitian-crisis-reignites-the-left-s-criticism-16479401.php" target="_blank">allies within the Democratic Party</a>, President Biden is continuing to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving at the United States-Mexico border, using a specialized public health order that allows officials to circumvent the normal trappings of immigration procedure, including asylum interviews.
The Biden Administration <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1002-sixty-day-assessment-order.html" target="_blank">defends the use of the order</a>, called <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0716-title-42-order.html" target="_blank">Title 42</a>, arguing that summary expulsions are “necessary,” due to “the ongoing risks of transmission and spread of COVID-19.”
But a growing cacophony of top public health experts are calling foul.
There’s no evidence that a policy allowing for mass expulsions prevents the spread of COVID-19, they argue. And it may, in fact, have the opposite effect: by rounding up and detaining hundreds of thousands of migrants in large groups, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which does not offer COVID-19 testing for migrants, may actually be stoking the transmission of the disease. Migrants often spend days and weeks in crowded facilities before they’re transported and expelled. 
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
“The Title 42 order fuels the pandemic,” says Julia Koehler, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric infectious disease specialist. “It does not promote public health. It is opposing public health.”
Raul Gutierrez, a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area and co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, describes Title 42 as “lacking any public health justification.” It “actually might be threatening public health and safety for asylum seekers,” he adds. “I don’t think that there’s a defensible public health reason to keep Title 42 in place.” AAP has also called for the CDC to <a href="https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/transition-plan-2020/leading-nation/immigration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">end the use</a> of Title 42.
The Trump Administration first invoked Title 42 in March 2020, as COVID-19 infections began skyrocketing in the U.S. But the Biden Administration has seized upon the order with renewed enthusiasm, using it to expel nearly twice as many people as the Trump Administration did.
According to TIME’s analysis of <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;" target="_blank">a CPB database</a>, from March 2020 to December 2020, the Trump Administration used Title 42 to expel roughly 395,000 migrants; from February 2021 to August 2021, the last month for which data is available, the Biden Administration has used Title 42 to expel nearly 700,000.
<h2>An unprecedented use of Title 42</h2>
ACLU, Texas Civil Rights Project, RAICES, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and Oxfam America have brought a class action lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the Biden Administration’s use of Title 42 is in violation of federal immigration law because it bars asylum seekers from the right to seek protections in the U.S.
The Biden Administration argues that Title 42 is a public health measure, governed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), rather than an immigration measure.
“Title 42 is a public health authority, not an immigration authority, and its continued use is thus dictated by the CDC,” the agency said in an Oct. 4 <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/10/04/dhs-statement-updated-cdc-order" rel="noopener" target="_blank">public statement</a>. “[The Department of Homeland Security] will continue to defer to public health experts on decisions related to Title 42 while continuing to develop safe, legal, and orderly pathways for migration.”
Both Koehler and Monette Zard, the director of the <a href="https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/research/program-forced-migration-and-health" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Program on Forced Migration and Health</a> at Columbia University’s School of Public Health, say that because the Biden Administration altered Title 42 to exempt <a href="https://time.com/5953161/unaccompanied-minors-children-march-increase/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">unaccompanied migrant children</a> and some family units, it is now an immigration policy masquerading as a public health policy.
Read More: <a href="https://time.com/6103725/haiti-deported-biden-aid/">The Biden Administration Promised ‘Immediate’ Aid to Haitian Deportees. It Has Yet to Arrive</a>
“There are hundreds of thousands of other travelers crossing every single day that are not subject to any kind of public health measure,” Zard says. “The danger with Title 42 is it creates and feeds the rhetoric which suggests that migrants are the vectors here, and there is really no evidence to suggest that and it’s unlikely that that’s the case.”
<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0716-title-42-order.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Title 42</a> was passed in 1944 as part of the Public Health Service Act. Under the order, the CDC can temporarily suspend the “introduction of persons into the United States when the [CDC] Director determines that the existence of a communicable disease in a foreign country or place creates a serious danger of the introduction of such disease into the United States.”
The order has never been used in this way before, nor was it intended as an immigration tool, says Stanford Law professor Lucas Guttentag. In April 2020, he wrote that “never before—in over seventy-five years,” had this measure been a “<a href="https://law.stanford.edu/2020/04/15/coronavirus-border-expulsions-cdcs-assault-on-asylum-seekers-and-unaccompanied-minors/" target="_blank">substitute or mechanism for regulating admission under the immigration laws</a> or for authorizing a noncitizen’s deportation or return to their home country.”
On Oct. 6, Koehler and several colleagues sent a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky asking her to end the use of Title 42. “This order has no basis in science,” they wrote. “The order does not protect Border Patrol agents, migrants or the American public from COVID-19…Instead, your order reinforces a dehumanizing trope of migrants as vectors of disease.” More than 300 medical professionals across the country signed the letter.
The Program on Forced Migration and Health has also written several similar letters since Title 42 was invoked. In a Sept. 1 <a href="https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/node/76271" rel="noopener" target="_blank">letter</a> to the CDC, DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that oversees the care of unaccompanied, more than 40 professors and medical experts said Title 42 “continues to unethically and illegally exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to expel, block, and return to danger, asylum seekers and individuals seeking protection at the border.”
Zard says the CDC has not responded to any letters from the Program on Forced Migration and Health, including one from Dec. 2020 that offered suggestions for how the government could continue asylum access while mitigating against COVID-19.
“We were prepared for the Biden administration to need a couple of months, maybe three months,” Zard tells TIME, adding that she and the members of the program believed the Biden Administration was working in good faith. “But that belief in that good faith has waned very, very considerably…I think there’s no question now that these measures could have been put in place, there’s just not the political will to do so, and it’s shameful.”
<h2>Crowded detention facilities, crowded camps</h2>
There has been no scientific research conducted on the question of whether Title 42 has affected the spread of COVID-19, according to both Zard and Katherine McCann, a senior program officer at the Program on Forced Migration and Health. A CDC spokesperson did not answer TIME’s questions on whether the agency was studying the impact internally.
A DHS spokesperson says the agency refers anyone in their custody who is exhibiting symptoms to local health systems for appropriate testing, diagnosis and treatment. CBP does not offer COVID-19 testing before expelling migrants unless they show signs of illness.
<div class="c-message_kit__gutter">
<div class="c-message_kit__gutter__right" role="presentation" data-qa="message_content">
<div class="c-message_kit__blocks c-message_kit__blocks--rich_text">
<div class="c-message__message_blocks c-message__message_blocks--rich_text">
<div class="p-block_kit_renderer" data-qa="block-kit-renderer">
<div class="p-block_kit_renderer__block_wrapper p-block_kit_renderer__block_wrapper--first">
<div class="p-rich_text_block" dir="auto">
<div class="p-rich_text_section">Lawyers and humanitarian aid workers at organizations like Al Otro Lado, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Global Response Management argue that Title 42 has exacerbated the spread COVID-19 among migrant populations on the Mexican side of the border. The problem, they tell TIME, is particularly acute when CBP has detained large groups of migrants in one part of the border for days or weeks, then transported them to another part of the border to expel them.</div>
<div>Read More: <a href="https://time.com/6012808/us-expel-migrants-mexico-shelters/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Shelters From Reynosa to Tijuana Are at Capacity and Scrambling for Resources as the U.S. Continues to Expel Migrants</a></div>
<div class="p-rich_text_section">NGOs and local governments in the Mexican border cities are overwhelmed with handling expensive testing and quarantine measures. In Ciudad Juárez, just across the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso, Texas, where shelters are already at capacity and social distancing is nearly impossible, community organizers are searching for a new facility help to prevent outbreaks of COVID-19.</div>
<div>“It’s an emergency waiting to happen,” says <a href="https://time.com/5942119/pregnant-asylum-seekers-border-clinic/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Karina Breceda</a>, one of the people leading the search. Though the city has taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in migrant communities—like placing expelled migrants in quarantine at a hotel before sending them to shelters—the systems are fragile and expensive, and vaccines are not reaching migrants as quickly as they are reaching Juárez citizens.</div>
<div>“The NGOs are moving mountains,” says McCann. “But you can’t put on civil society what is the government’s responsibility.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>Zard says she tells colleagues often that those who work in public health need to set the record straight, “that this is not being done in our name…[Title 42] is really not being done to serve a public health objective.”</div>
<img alt="" height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/time/politics/~4/IXTSpMKMfOo" width="1" />

Biden Is Expelling Migrants On COVID-19 Grounds, But Health Experts Say That’s All Wrong

Despite sharp criticism from top officials and allies within the Democratic Party , President Biden is continuing to expel hundred...

05:34

As Bannon Bucks Subpoena, Trump Fights Power of Jan. 6 Probe

<aside class="right-rail__container right-rail__container--ad">
<div class="right-rail__ad__wrapper right-rail__module">
<div class="right-rail__ad" id="right-rail__ad-6105290"></div>
</div>
 
<div class="OUTBRAIN right-rail__outbrain right-rail__module" data-src="https://time.com/6105290/steve-bannon-subpoean-trump-january-6-commission/" data-widget-id="SB_2" data-ob-template="timemag"></div>
</aside>
For months, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has waited to hear from the people closest to Donald Trump to shed light on what the former President was doing as hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. On Thursday at midnight, his longtime advisor Stephen Bannon blew past his subpoena deadline to submit documents to the probe, delivering a setback to the beleaguered committee and teeing up a potential long legal battle to come.
On Sept. 23, the committee gave Bannon and Trump’s former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Pentagon official Kash Patel an Oct. 7 deadline to respond to subpoena letters asking them to appear for depositions and provide materials relevant to its investigation. 
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Bannon has “indicated that he will try to hide behind vague references to privileges of the former President,” according to a joint statement issued on Friday by committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wy.). Meadows and Patel are “engaging with the Select Committee,” the statement added, though the extent of their compliance is unclear. Scavino, who was not mentioned in the statement, has reportedly not responded to the subpoena as of Friday. A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment on the status of Scavino.
“We think those four individuals have clear information as to what Donald Trump was doing that day,” Thompson told reporters on Sept. 24. “Criminal contempt is on the table … And if it comes to that, there will be no reluctance at all on the committee to do that.”
In a letter first reported by <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/07/trump-jan-6-committees-subpoena-515593" target="_blank">Politico</a>, Trump’s lawyer asked the four former aides not to share any testimony or documents, claiming that records related to the events of Jan. 6 are protected “from disclosure by the executive and other privileges, including among others the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.”
The decision by Trump to push back against demands from the probe—his first attempt at blocking key testimony in the commission—raises a raft of legal questions about how far his team can go in order to withhold compelling information. During his four year tenure, Trump dramatically expanded the powers of the presidency. Now, nine months out of office, he is still seeking to use the privileges of that office to shield himself and delay the committee’s proceedings, legal experts say.
“If the courts actually have a chance to rule on the merits of Trump’s claims of executive privilege, Trump will most likely lose,” says Jonathan Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who previously served in the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice. “The real question will be how long Trump is able to tie up the issue in the courts, including by appealing up to the Supreme Court if necessary.”
Individuals who refuse to comply with the committee’s subpoenas could be prosecuted by the Justice Department and face a year in prison with a fine of up to $100,000 if convicted of criminal contempt of Congress. But if Trump can tie up the executive privilege issue in the courts long enough to outlast the Jan. 6 committee’s speedy timeline for a final report—planned for sometime in 2022—Shaub says the committee could become frustrated by their inability to get information and simply move on.
Balance of power fights between Congress and the White House are as old as the presidency itself, and Trump relied heavily on the claims of executive privilege to block records requests from the Hill while he was in office, particularly during his first impeachment trial and attempts to hide his tax records. But executive privilege for a former president has never been codified in the face of a congressional subpoena. Harry Truman tried in 1953, claiming it allowed him to ignore a subpoena request to testify before a congressional committee after he left office. The committee ultimately dropped the request.
President Joe Biden, who is in charge of some of the federal agencies that have the records Trump doesn’t want his former colleagues to hand over, has the power to authorize or block a former president from asserting their executive privilege. On Friday, he rejected Trump’s request for privilege over an initial batch of documents sought by the Jan. 6 commission, writing in a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration that an “assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States.”
“This will be an ongoing process and this is just the first set of documents,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at Friday’s press briefing. “And we will evaluate questions of privilege on a case-by-case basis, but the President has also been clear that he believes it to be of the utmost importance for both Congress and the American people to have a complete understanding of the events of that day to prevent them from happening again.”
Experts suggest the issue could go all the way to the Supreme Court. “Because the constitutional law in this area is so unsettled, courts will be unlikely to dismiss Trump’s claims out of hand,” Shaub says. “The current statutory law and regulations do make clear that President Biden gets the final say on any claims of executive privilege, but Trump will raise a constitutional challenge, which would override any contrary statutes or regulations.”
If it does go up to the high court, a rarely used precedent from a landmark 1977 ruling in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services may help Trump’s case. In the ruling, the court recognized that Richard Nixon could assert executive privilege claims over official records from his administration even though he was no longer the president. The court, however, also said in its judgement that executive privilege “is not for the benefit of the President as an individual, but for the benefit of the Republic.”
A serious showing of presidential misconduct or wrongdoing could erode—or possibly eliminate—any privilege claim, says Kate Shaw, a professor at Cardozo School of Law who previously served in Obama’s White House counsel’s office.
“It’s likely that many of the documents requested reveal former President Trump working to undermine the results of an election he had clearly lost,” Shaw says. “That’s not the sort of material that should be shielded from disclosure by the doctrine of executive privilege.” She also believes any decision made by Biden to grant or deny executive privilege to Trump should carry “substantial weight” in the eyes of a court.
Taylor Budowich, Trump’s current communications director, said that the committee’s Jan. 6 records request was “outrageously broad” and lacked “both legal precedent and legislative merit.” The “executive privilege will be defended” on behalf of the former president, he said in a statement.
As the deadline for subpoena compliance by Trump aides passed on Thursday night, the committee issued a third round of subpoenas to organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally that brought Trump supporters together prior to the attack on the Capitol.
“The rally on the Capitol grounds on January 6, like the rally near the White House that day, immediately preceded the violent attack on the seat of our democracy,” Thompson said in a statement on Thursday. “Over the course of that day, demonstrations escalated to violence and protestors became rioters.”
Thompson said he expects these witnesses to cooperate fully with the probe, adding that the select committee needs to understand “all the details” about the events leading up to the Capitol attack, including who was involved in planning and funding them.
In total, the committee has issued 18 subpoenas, ranging from the former Trump aides to rally organizers who are said to have played a role in the violent storming of the Capitol, in which five people died and 140 police officers were injured.
Whether GOP lawmakers who were in contact with Trump during the insurrection, or in the days leading up to it, will also receive subpoenas is yet to be determined by the probe, though Thompson noted it’s being discussed and “there will be no reluctance to do it.”
<img alt="" height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/time/politics/~4/67KxHeQKGVM" width="1" />

As Bannon Bucks Subpoena, Trump Fights Power of Jan. 6 Probe

For months, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has waited to hear from the people closest to Donald T...