What Title 42 has meant for border encounters

Issued in March 2020, Title 42 restricts migrants from seeking asylum in the US if they’ve recently been in a country where infectious disease is present. Last spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it would end a Title 42 order that denied migrants entry at the border to stop the spread of COVID-19. However, after 24 states sued to keep the measure, a federal judge issued an injunction to keep the order in place.

Data from government sources details how Title 42 has affected border encounters and asylum claims during the pandemic:

• Federal law enforcement had 3.8 million migrant encounters at the Canadian and Mexican borders from March 2020 to April 2022. Title 42 denied entry to 51% of migrants in these encounters. (Border encounters are instances when a migrant is apprehended, expelled, or otherwise determined inadmissible to the US along the border.)

• The number of asylum cases filed dropped 56% from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, from 196,000 to 87,000. 

• There were fewer asylum seekers due to Title 42, reducing the current backlog by 10,000 cases compared to fiscal year 2020. As of March 2022, there were still 647,194 backlogged asylum cases awaiting review in US immigration courts.
   
• Migrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador accounted for 64% of border encounters during the pandemic — but were 93% of Title 42 cases.

See additional charts and more background in this article.



How many people travel out of state for an abortion?
 

Recent abortion metrics show that tens of thousands of pregnant people travelled to neighboring states to terminate a pregnancy in 2019.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, activating several trigger laws that ban abortion outright in many states, it could lead to even more people seeking an out-of-state abortion. Here's what the data says.

• In 2019, more than 57,000 pregnant people traveled outside their home states for an abortion. That’s 10% of reported abortions that year.

• About two-thirds (68.7%) of abortions in Washington, DC were provided to people from outside the area, the highest rate nationwide. Arizona had the lowest rate of abortions provided to out-of-state residents: 0.5%.

• In 2019, more than 7,700 people traveled from outside Illinois for an abortion, about 16.2% of all abortions statewide. Most patients came from Missouri (4,494), Indiana (1,949), and Wisconsin (495). 

• Washington, DC, New York City, and 47 states provide abortion data to the CDC. Three more states — California, Maryland, and New Hampshire — don’t report the number of abortions performed. 

Learn more about how trigger laws could impact these numbers at USAFacts.


Steve Ballmer on Morning Joe