hill is a Distinguished Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Director of the Residence of General Preventive Medicine at UC San Diego-San Diego State University. He lives in San Diego.
Since March 2020, the U.S. federal government has allowed border guards to return anyone seeking asylum in the United States using Title 42, an emergency “public health” order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Title 42 cruelly and violently expelled asylum seekers into precarious conditions without processing them under standard immigration laws. Officially called public health policy, the Trump administration invoked this dubious decree and perpetuated the Biden administration in order to allegedly mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Every day, Title 42 prevents thousands of colored migrants - whose nations originate primarily in South and Central America - from seeking their human right to asylum, while those from predominantly white countries are allowed to enter. In practice, Title 42 is not a public health policy, but a racist anti-immigration scheme.
Under the auspices of the San Diego Rapid Response Network, UC San Diego Health has been involved in providing shelter in our region since December 2018, triangling and providing medical assistance to all asylum seekers released by the Department of Homeland Security. Our rigorous health screening and comprehensive public health protocols work to reduce the spread of every type of infectious disease including COVID-19, for which we immediately developed protocols - and protocols we continue to apply - to protect public health and provide new medical care.
Before the pandemic, incoming migrants were examined for various diseases, from chickenpox to scabies and lice. During the day before COVID-19, those were our biggest concerns. Today, the stakes are much higher, but the good news is that we have a strong system where screening for infectious diseases has been expanded to COVID-19, and with ongoing treatment for urgent needs such as smallpox, flu and more. From the beginning, we treated everyone equally with dignity and compassion.
Since the pandemic began two years ago, more than 80,000 asylum seekers released into our care have been tested on COVID-19. If they were positive, they were quarantined in hotel rooms, in accordance with public health guidelines, until a negative test result was confirmed. Individuals who served also received vaccination against COVID-19, if desired, before going to their destination cities to continue with immigration procedures. These policies were established before Title 42 was adopted, and we will continue to work in this way because it is the right thing to do.
Although effective strategies to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 have been identified and implemented, including ongoing masking in high-risk situations, vaccines and antivirals, policies such as Title 42 remain in place - clear disparities between evidence-based public and effective public health protocols and immigration practices. Title 42 was never about public health, but was designed to deter certain populations, allowing the U.S. government to choose who can pass only on the basis of their nation of origin.
The only thing Title 42 has done in more than two years since its implementation is to limit the vulnerable and underserved population to obtain safe haven. In fact, the CDC recently called for the abolition of Title 42, stating that “current public health conditions and increased availability of tools to combat COVID-19” have made this policy unnecessary.
San Diego’s emergency shelter services - and strict health protocols in place - are the result of extraordinary joint efforts unprecedented in size and scope and are now seen as a model of response for border towns across the country. The goal of this public-private partnership in which dozens of agencies at all levels of government together with non-profit organizations work together: to safely welcome and provide shelter for vulnerable migrants arriving in our community while public health is focused.
As we look to the future, we call on more of our community leaders to help develop our support network and ensure that all incoming asylum seekers receive the compassionate help they deserve.
The US government must immediately abolish Title 42 and focus on repairing the broken asylum and immigration systems in our country. In the meantime, we will continue to make sure that public health is protected, because that will remain our main priority in the services of the shelter for migrants in San Diego.