Title 42 Expulsions Decrease During the Biden Administration

As reported last week, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released the number of border encounters in September, bringing the year-end total to 1,734,686 – an all-time record. It is no surprise that border encounters have increased nearly every month of the Biden presidency, given his reversal of many Trump-era border policies and his refusal to deport illegal aliens.

As hard as it is to imagine, this record-breaking year could have been a lot worse had the Biden administration completely ended the use of Title 42 expulsions. This public health order, which the Trump administration instituted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, gives Border Patrol the ability to quickly expel migrants back to their home country.

There were 1,063,526 Title 42 expulsions in fiscal year (FY) 2021, meaning 61 percent of all migrants encountered along the Southwest border were expelled under Title 42. However, expulsions decreased from 86 percent during the Trump administration to 56 percent during the Biden administration. This can be attributed to the Biden administration’s decision to exempt family units and unaccompanied alien minors.

Single adults, who made up 64 percent of all border encounters, were expelled nearly 85 percent of the time. Unsurprisingly, family units were only expelled a quarter of the time, given the Biden administration’s roll back of using this policy on families. Unaccompanied alien minors were expelled the least, at 3 percent. In November 2020, a court order required the federal government to stop removing unaccompanied alien minors.  

As noted above, the percentage of migrants expelled under Title 42 decreased 30 percent under the Biden administration.

President Biden has remained relatively consistent, expelling more than 80 percent of single adults. However, there is a steep decline in the number of expelled family units. While Title 42 expulsions were used three-quarters of the time under the Trump administration, that number dropped precipitously to only one-quarter under the Biden administration.

While it is a welcome sign that President Biden has resisted pressure from open borders activists to end this public health order completely, the fact remains that this policy has been used far less under the new administration. Furthermore, since March, at least 160,000 illegal aliens have been released into the country’s interior, often with little to no supervision, according to Border Patrol documents obtained by Fox News.

In order to put an end to the worst border crisis in recent memory, the Biden administration should be utilizing every tool available rather than rolling back the successful border security measures implemented by the Trump administration.