For much of 2020, U.S. authorities turned away all asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border, including both families arriving together and unaccompanied children. The prior Administration attempted to justify the restrictions by a novel invocation of Title 42 of the United States Code, which grants a weak form of quarantine power to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) but no enforcement authority. The CDC’s own public-health experts opposed the border closure, but were overruled by then-Vice President Mike Pence. For unaccompanied children in particular, the border closure was in contravention of the protections spelled out in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008.

Read the full report USCRI_Issue_Brief_UAC_March_2021 (2)