President Biden’s scheduled meeting with Hispanic Democrats touched on a series of issues affecting Latino communities, but kitchen table topics were overshadowed by the ongoing debate over the termination of Title 42.
Seven members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) met with Biden for over an hour at the White House Monday, seeking to present a unified front on an issue that Republicans are exploiting to paint a picture of chaos at the border.
“The Congressional Hispanic Caucus made it very clear that the Title 42 policy is a public health emergency policy that was instituted under the Trump administration during its hate and fear anti-immigrant agenda,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) told reporters following the meeting.
“We are in a different position now than we were in the past,” he said. “There’s ample vaccines available. There is the ability to test and quarantine that work. And so, Title 42 should be lifted, and that we should focus on border management policy in order to make sure that they have the resources in order to move forward.”
But the administration’s plans to stop enforcing Title 42 were thrown into doubt as the meeting came to a close. A Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana said he planned to block the administration’s plans for rescinding the public health order, a win for a group of GOP-led states who sued to stop Biden from moving forward.
The meeting punctuated internal disagreement in the Democratic Party around the Biden administration’s decision to end enforcement of the Title 42 authority, a public health order that allows border officials to speedily turn away migrants at the U.S. southern border.
Immigration advocates have a litany of concerns about the policy, but at the center of those issues is that it allows officials to forego asylum screenings, blocking persecuted migrants from exercising a right they have under U.S. law.
While many support the Biden administration’s decision and indeed wish it had come sooner, others have expressed concern about the plans amid a prolonged spike in border crossings.
“Yes they’re listening to the immigration activists, but my question is who’s listening to the men and women in green and in blue and, more importantly, who is listening to the border communities – the sheriffs, the landowners, the rest of the people who live on the border?” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who represents a border community and has raised concerns about the policy decision, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), who was tasked with presenting the group’s position on Title 42 to Biden, said the meeting touched on a series of issues before turning to immigration, an issue that still led coverage of the meeting.
“The reality is when you talk to Latinos they’re talking about the economy, jobs, air pollution, and so the media is talking about things that are divisive,” said Barragán.
Barragán added that the CHC puts more blame over the immigration policy crisis on former President Trump than on Biden.
“The bottom line is this president walked into a tough situation with a prior administration who dismantled the legal immigration system,” she said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the meeting was part of Biden’s outreach to individual congressional caucuses. Biden has recently met with the Congressional Progressive Caucus as well as other groups in Congress.
Attendees said that it also covered the implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure law, immigration reform, and environmental justice.
At one point, an aide to the president walked into the room with a note saying the 30-minute meeting had gone on for 62 minutes.
Biden, rather than keep the information to himself, read the note out loud to laughter from the attendees.
Meanwhile, the White…
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