Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm your host Esther Eaton, I'm deputy editor of the Morning

Dispatch, and on today's episode we are doing an explainer of Title 42, which is a border policy

that's been in use during the pandemic. Talking about what it is, what impact it's had, and what could

happen if and when it goes away. We're talking with Aaron Reiklin Melnick, who is policy director at the

American Immigration Council. He was formerly an immigration lawyer with the Legal Aid Society

in New York City, and he brings just a wealth of knowledge about immigration law.

Thank you Aaron for joining us. Thank you for having me. So we hear about Title 42 a lot, you know,

it's in a lot of headlines right now, but for someone who's just unfamiliar with exactly what it is,

tell me about where it comes from and why it originally got put into place. The most important

thing to understand about Title 42 is that it's not an immigration law, it's a public health law.

It is actually one of the oldest public health laws we have on the books. It was actually first

passed by Congress in 1893, 125 years ago in the era of steamships. And the goal of the law at the

time, most scholars agree, was to give the US government authority to turn away ships in an era of

cholera and yellow fever when the most likely disease vector was a ship or a train coming to the

US border that had to be stopped before anyone was allowed in. This law sat pretty much dormant on

the books for 125 years until March of 2020 when the Trump administration tapped the law and created

the Title 42 policy that we have in effect now. That policy said that migrants were posing a threat

of spreading COVID-19 into the United States and that as a result, US border officials should turn

them away if possible, sending them back to a country that was willing to accept them rather than

allow them into the United States where they can access the asylum process and might have to spend

time in detention facilities at the border. And that is the policy that's been in effect for the

last two and a half years, even though by this point, the threat of migrants introducing COVID-19

...