Through a statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US government announced that it will end the policy of expelling unaccompanied children from the border.
The director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, announced that unaccompanied immigrant children will not be expelled from the United States, as dictated by the "Title 42" policy, with the aim of counteracting the spread of COVID-19. This policy was ordered during March 2020, after the beginning of the massive infections of COVID-19 in the United States.
Under the Title 42 order and the COVID-19 pandemic, US authorities were able to expel immigrant families who were seeking asylum in the United States from the country. However, during the Biden administration, the CDC has explained that the removal of unaccompanied minors does not solve real public health problems.
Following the decline in COVID-19 cases nationwide and increased vaccination rates in immigrants' countries of origin, the CDC decided to exempt unaccompanied migrant children from this removal policy.
In the statement, they explained that "the removal of unaccompanied non-citizen children is not justified to protect public health." In this sense, the CDC and the Office of Refugee Resettlement will be in charge of caring for and protecting non-citizen children while they implement the new measures to mitigate COVID-19.
In this way, networks of care centers will provide COVID tests and vaccines against these diseases, as well as medical care for immigrant children.
