Supreme Court Saves Joe Biden

Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

President Joe Biden has been let off the hook, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling on Title 42 on Tuesday (December 27).

Title 42 has been in effect since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump instituted the temporary measure to prevent migrant influxes during the pandemic.

The measure gave border officials the authority to expel asylum seekers without them having gone through a formal asylum process.

Despite many pandemic policies ending as cases dropped and vaccines became readily available used, Title 42 remained in effect — an issue that would sow division among Democrats.

Moderate Democrats, many of whom support maintaining Title 42, have found themselves at odds with the consensus of the Biden Administration over the Trump-era policy.

They’ve warned ending it will cause an unprecedented influx of migrants to enter the U.S., overwhelming border towns and depleting their resources.

Democrats, who’ve found favor with immigration advocates, assert the policy was never intended to be a long-term immigration enforcement measure, calling for the policy to end because it violates asylum seekers’ rights, especially as the pandemic winds down.

The infighting has placed Biden in a tenuous position, not only among Democrats but among a deeply divided electorate that has only recently started to warm up to him.

Then Biden was rescued from picking a side and arguing his case when the Supreme Court ruled to maintain Title 42.

Almost immediately, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security vowed to respect the Supreme Court’s ruling and enforce the policy, despite Biden saying — on the tarmac before getting off on vacation — that he believed ending Title 42 is “overdue.”