The contradictory CDC's Title 42 revocation is pure politics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that it plans to extend the mask mandate on public transportation another 15 days Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The biggest problem in public-health policy is inconsistency. Which is why it doesn’t make sense for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be extending its mask mandate on planes, buses and trains while rolling back Title 42, which has done far more to protect our country (as well as the people entering it) from disease than a flimsy cloth mask ever has.

As we enter an important phase of learning to live with the virus, focusing mainly on severe disease and protecting the most vulnerable, it is time for all mandatory strategies except Title 42 to be removed.

The COVID pandemic was starting back in March 2020 when the CDC made the decision to invoke Title 42 to allow the timely expulsion of some migrants. The United States lacked sufficient immigrant holding facilities that could provide appropriate social distancing and ventilation. We didn’t have any treatments or vaccines, and we were just learning the extent of this emerging threat.

Remember, Title 42 is a public-health tool intended to help protect the health safety of those crossing the border, US border personnel and US communities. In 2020, a growing number of illegal immigrants had active COVID-19 and served as a potential source of spread to all three groups.

The CDC announced it was scrapping Title 42, which permitted Border Patrol officials to expel migrants without hearing asylum claims due to the ongoing pandemic.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

US Customs and Border Protection stations were overwhelmed, and not only were agents getting sick, but migrants were passing it among themselves. CDC rightly determined that it was in the interest of public health to send back migrants in danger of being infected rather than continue to try to contain them in a super-spreading environment. Soon, more than 5% were testing positive, and despite best efforts, hospitals in McAllen and Laredo, Texas, and surrounding areas all experienced a wave of COVID cases.

Invoking Title 42 was a “buck stops here” CDC decision based on public health, not politics. Sending close to 2 million people back across our southern border to Mexico since March 2020 has not only helped spare local hospitals but also saved many thousands of lives.

Consider that the United States has a long history of carefully screening immigrants that precedes the inclusion of Title 42 into public-health law, which allows US health authorities to deny entry of people or property into the country “to prevent spread of communicable disease.” We both had relatives enter America legally, including via Ellis Island, more than 100 years ago, with officials carefully examining their necks for the lymph-node swellings of scrofula (tuberculosis). Why should now be any different?

The COVID pandemic is still a significant threat to the lives and health of those who are most vulnerable. So even as we transition back to normal life, it is premature to roll back the use of Title 42 in the battle against SARS-CoV-2 and any emerging variants. We continue to lack substantial real-time screening and treatment facilities at our borders. We also lack social distancing and proper ventilation.

Customs and Border Protection admitted Monday that lifting Title 42 will “likely” cause an “increase in encounters” with illegal immigrants along the southern border.

AP/Ross D. Franklin

We hope that the current CDC and its leadership will reverse course and ground their Title 42 decision in public health rather than as an extension of the administration’s immigration policy. The CDC is responsible for ensuring that COVID-mitigation measures are in place for all illegal immigrants in US custody. It is much more difficult to determine the COVID risk of a migrant than of a traveler on a plane or train — which is why these two policy changes are contradictory and appear driven by politics rather than science. (CDC’s parent, the Department of Health and Human Services, added to the contradiction this week by extending the public-health emergency.)

Let data and public-health improvements at border facilities define which direction Title 42 should ultimately go in, not Washington politics. America is still a land of opportunity and an inspiration to many around the world, but putting migrants at serious health risk and increasing the spread of contagions while chastising legal travelers is not what our founders had in mind.

Robert Redfield, M.D., was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2018 to 2021. Marc Siegel, M.D., is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health and a Fox News medical analyst.