U.S. Senator Menendez urges colleagues to reject Republicans’ Title 42 poison pill

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) took to the Senate Floor Wednesday night to speak about issues facing the Latino community, including the posssible extension of Title 42, the public health policy that has been unlawfully utilized to expel migrants seeking asylum in the United States.

In his remarks, Sen. Menendez urged his colleagues to oppose any amendments that would extend this failed and inhumane policy.

“Title 42 is a disastrous relic of the Trump Administration and Stephen Miller’s racist immigration policies. It is grounded in the callous ideology that somehow Latino immigrants who come to our southern border don’t deserve humanitarian protections under our laws,” Menendez said. “Title 42 has made border security, an issue that Latino communities deeply care about, far worse at our southern border and it has denied access to our asylum system for refugees fleeing persecution and torture. The only individuals that benefit from extending Title 42 are the smuggling networks that exploit migrants, predominantly Black and Brown migrants, who we turn away before adjudicating why they chose to migrate.”

“Republicans know that Title 42 has led to record high border crossings. Voting yes on any amendment to extend Title 42 will doom this omnibus spending package,” Menendez said. “Considering an indefinite extension of Title 42 when we have millions of Dreamers who still cannot become U.S. citizens and millions of people waiting to legally be joined with their families in the U.S. is the greatest failure of all.”

Sen. Menendez has long advocated for an end to inhumane Trump-era immigration policies such as Title 42 and Remain in Mexico, which were both designed by Stephen Miller to evade the nation’s domestic and international legal obligations to asylum seekers and to increase irregular migration at the southern border.