Empower Wisconsin | Dec. 20, 2022
MADISON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would end Title 42, the pandemic-era policy first implemented by former President Donald Trump to stop illegal immigrants from entering the U.S. to check COVID-19 spread.
Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay pending further order and asked the government to respond by 5 p.m. Tuesday. Title 42 was set to expire Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis. 5th CD) said ending the policy that has prevented hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum in the United States since March 2020 will create chaos at the Southern border and beyond.
Fitzgerald, who, unlike President Joe Biden has visited the border, said the questions he’s heard most from the people in border communities is, what’s going to happen to Title 42 and is there anything he can do to make sure it stays in place.
“Because if you don’t, and if Title 42 goes away, we will be overwhelmed,” Fitzgerald told Empower Wisconsin Monday on the Vicki McKenna Show. “Title 42 was a deterrent. It was a way of slowing the migration and they’re (the Biden administration) pulling the stops out on that.”
As Fox News reported, El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico were preparing for a surge of as many as 5,000 new migrants a day in anticipation of Title 42’s expiration. El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser on Saturday issued an emergency declaration to access additional local and state resources for building shelters and other urgently needed aid.
The Biden administration, which has aggressively sought to kill the Trump-era public health emergency policy, has said its hands are tied after a federal court in D.C. tossed out Title 42 setting it on its path to extinction. Members of congress have also claimed there’s nothing they can do.
In the words of Biden, that’s malarky.
“This idea that they’re throwing up their hands (saying) this is in the courts, there’s not much they can do, they could absolutely address this in that omnibus (spending bill) and the president could sign it into law and stop this immediately, but they won’t do it,” Fitzgerald said.
Rep. Scott Fitzgerald is our guest today on PowerUp, Empower Wisconsin’s podcast.
