This week, President Biden held a 90-minute meeting at the White House with seven leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) and his top aides to discuss immigration. During the meeting, he said the administration would ultimately end Title 42, and asked the members to help him justify his immigration policies in public and in the upcoming budget and legislative debates.
However, as the meeting was taking place, U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhay temporarily blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from ending Title 42 on May 23rd, 2022, as scheduled. CHC members are now unsure about what that court order will mean for the administration’s plans.
CHC members were pleased that the President has asked to double the budget of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) family reunification work. USCIS is currently facing a backlog of more than 4 million cases that have not been processed.
Members also left the meeting with the assurance that President Biden will sign an executive order extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for another 5 years. DACA provides undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children with work permits and protection from deportation, both renewable.
The President and his team also said they would look into extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to people from Honduras, and Nicaragua, among other places, who have not been re-designated in years.
CHC members said infrastructure, student debt forgiveness, environmental justice, and other immigration issues were also discussed. The Biden administration will be holding more meetings with Congress in the following days.
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