A UN agency calls for an end to asylum restrictions in the United States

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued an extraordinary call to President Joe Biden’s government on Thursday to lift pandemic-related restrictions on people seeking asylum in the United States.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has called for an end to the authority called 42nd, named after a section of the 1944 Public Health Act that the Donald Trump administration used in March 2020 to effectively deny asylum on the island’s southern border. United States of America. President Biden left the measure in effect, albeit with exceptions for minors crossing without the company of adults.

According to this rule, people from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who cross the border into Mexico are expelled without being given the opportunity to seek asylum.

In a strong statement, Grandi said that denying these people their right to asylum and expelling them from the country violated the “central principles” of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and that the expulsions had “consequences. Humanitarian aid in northern Mexico.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayuras declared in Congress that Title 42 “is not an immigration tool, but a public health tool” authorized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His letter has been met with skepticism as the situation in the United States is slowly returning to normal.

Grandi said that protecting public health and the right to seek asylum are “completely compatible.”

“At the height of the public health emergency, many countries apply protocols such as health checks, diagnostic tests and quarantine measures to protect public health and the right to asylum at the same time,” he said.

More than 60% of the nearly 179,000 encounters with Customs and Border Protection with immigrants at the Mexican border during April resulted in the removal of Title 42, making it a cornerstone of the United States’ immigration system.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.