Title 42 Must Be Repealed to Protect LGBTQI and Other Vulnerable Refugees

April 21, 2022 – The Council for Global Equality welcomes the Biden Administration’s long overdue decision to end the use of Title 42, the discredited public health provision that has been used to expel vulnerable LGBTQI and other asylum seekers at the U.S. border. We are gravely concerned and disappointed, however, at the statements of some politicians that appear to encourage a continuation of this harmful policy that endangers the lives of LGBTQI and other persons seeking asylum.

Title 42 policy was never about public health, as leading epidemiologists and public health experts have repeatedly explained.  Instead, the policy has been used to evade refugee law to deny LGBTQI and other groups seeking refugee protection at the U.S. southwest border their legal rights as they flee harsh and well-documented patterns of persecution in Central America and elsewhere. 

“The Council for Global Equality urges members of Congress to abandon efforts to hold hostage COVID funding relief unless the unjustifiable Title 42 policy is forced back into effect,” said Mark Bromley, Co-Chair of Council for Global Equality.  Julie Dorf, Co-Chair of the Council for Global Equality, noted that “Title 42 was supposedly about protecting lives, but it has had the opposite effect, exposing LGBTQI refugees and other vulnerable groups to conditions of kidnaping, rape and violence when they are pushed back from the U.S. border on spurious public health grounds.”

Under Title 42, LGBTQI asylum seekers have been forced back to counties where they are tortured and persecuted, or returned to Mexico, where they are subject to kidnapping and violence.  LGBTQ asylum seekers stranded in Mexico who are unable to seek U.S. protection due to Title 42 have frequently faced attacks in Mexico due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity —as well as their race, nationality, and other characteristics.  Human Rights First has tracked nearly 10,000 reports of kidnappings, torture, and brutal attacks on the victims of this policy since President Biden took office. Another survey conducted by Al Otro Lado suggests that 89 percent of LGBTQ asylum seekers were the victim of an attack or attempted attack in the prior month.

“Title 42 is deadly and counterproductive, as it just encourages border crossings away from ports of entry instead of a timely, humane, safe and orderly approach to refugee adjudication,” noted Bromley. “Title 42 needs to end next month as planned,” Bromley emphasized.