During his first term, President Donald Trump issued a public health emergency known as Title 42 to expel asylum-seekers and other immigrants in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden used the same tactic to empower U.S. Customs and Border Protection to block immigrants from countries with Covid outbreaks.

Now, even as his administration works to disassemble U.S. public health infrastructure, Trump is expected to deploy Title 42 again — this time to block immigrants from countries with recent cases of tuberculosis.

Experts argue there’s even less of a justification for invoking Title 42 now, noting the hypocrisy of using public health as an excuse to deny rights to asylum-seekers while systematically enabling the spread of disease at home and abroad.

“The first [Trump administration], there didn’t seem to be that much concern over masking and getting vaccines widely dispersed,” said Juan Pedroza, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And that seems to still be the case now with the new Trump administration being very skeptical of research science when it comes to public health. At the same time that they’re saying they’re concerned about public health when it comes to........

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