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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Illegal...Inhumane" Immigration Policy Prompts Another Big Resignation at the State Department
October 4, 2021
Illegal Inhumane Immigration Policy Prompts Another Big Resignation at the State Department
Veteran human rights lawyer and scholar Harold Koh steps down because of Title 42.
Isabela Dias
Less than two weeks after the US special envoy for Haiti resigned in response to the inhumane deportation of Haitians arriving at the Southern border, a senior State Department official has also quit, decrying the Biden administrations continued use of a Trump-era policy known as Title 42. In an internal memo from October 2 obtained by Politico, State Department legal adviser Harold Koh described Title 42 as a badly flawed policy, which relies on a public health authority to summarily expel migrants save for a few exceptions. Its existence, he argued, continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (refouler) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti, a country he describes as a humanitarian nightmare.
The illegal and inhumane Title 42 expulsions, Koh continued, are not worthy of this Administration I so strongly support. He urged the administration to do everything in your power to revise this policy, especially as it affects Haitians, into one that this worthy of this Nation we love.
In March 2020, then President Donald Trump invoked Title 42 to purportedly control the spread of COVID-19. Since then, the obscure public health order has faced fierce criticism and legal challenges. Public health experts and some officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have repeatedly argued its implementation lacks any epidemiological justification for preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, pro-immigrant advocates say it violates the right to seek asylum under the law and places migrants in harms way. In addition to returning them to dangerous places in Mexico, where many have experienced extortion, kidnapping, and rape, the policy also forces migrants to cross through more remote and perilous parts of the border.
Link to tweet
?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1445111000986968070%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.motherjones.com%2Fpolitics%2F2021%2F10%2Fharold-koh-senior-state-department-official-slams-title-42-on-his-way-out%2F
snip//
Koh, the son of a South Korean diplomat who won asylum in the United States after a military coup overthrew the government in 1961, served as a State Department legal adviser under President Barack Obama and prior to that as US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In the early 1990s, he led a group of Yale law students in arguing a case at the Supreme Court for the release of 300 Haitian migrants who had been detained at the Guantanamo Naval base. In his resignation memo, Koh wrote that the implementation of Title 42 cannot be squared with the Biden Administrations own publicly stated policy objectives and values and degrades US credibility abroad.
more...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/harold-koh-senior-state-department-official-slams-title-42-on-his-way-out/
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"Illegal...Inhumane" Immigration Policy Prompts Another Big Resignation at the State Department (Original Post)
babylonsister
Oct 2021
OP
Everyone needs to test negative and be vaccinated before being permitted to enter in a pandemic
MichMan
Oct 2021
#2
I thought immigration matters were handled by the Department of Homeland Security?
Klaralven
Oct 2021
#3
Solly Mack
(90,766 posts)1. K&R
MichMan
(11,925 posts)2. Everyone needs to test negative and be vaccinated before being permitted to enter in a pandemic
Title 42 or not
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)3. I thought immigration matters were handled by the Department of Homeland Security?
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,344 posts)4. K&R
crickets
(25,979 posts)5. K&R for visibility.