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You probably don't remember the passage of Title 42,

let alone that of Title 42 chapters 6A subchapter 2 Part G, Section 264.

But it's a part of US federal law that gives the government the authority to take emergency action to keep communicable diseases out of the country.

The portion which allows a sweeping disregard for asylum law, passed in 1944, reads in one

giant run-on paragraph sentence as follows.

Whenever the Surgeon General determines that by reason of the existence of any communicable

disease in a foreign country, there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease

into the United States, and that this danger is so increased

by the introduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension of the right

to introduce such persons and property is required in the interest of the public health.

The Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved by the President, shall have

the power to prohibit in whole or in part the introduction of persons and property

from such countries or places as he shall designate in order to avert such danger,

and for such period of time as he may deem necessary for such purpose.

Before President Donald Trump's administration used it on March 20, 2020,

it had been used only in 1929 to keep ships from China and the Philippines from

entering U.S. ports during a meningitis outbreak. But in March of 2020, when you probably

weren't paying much attention because the world was falling apart, when I'd just returned from a

work trip to Rwanda, where I was month before any precautions appeared in the USA, screened for a novel coronavirus,

the Trump administration cited this public health law in instructions to the Department of Homeland

Security on restrictions for migrants entering the United States.

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