RAND Experts Available to Discuss Implications of Lifting Public Health Code Title 42

May 10, 2023

The Biden administration's decision to end Title 42 on May 11 will have significant and complex implications for U.S. policies regarding immigration, border security, asylum and humanitarian issues, economic growth, and border communities.

Title 42 will be lifted the same day the administration ends the COVID-19 national emergency declaration, which gave the federal government more flexibility in modifying existing programs and rules to address the global pandemic.

The following RAND experts are available to discuss Title 42 and whether the United States is adequately prepared for a new surge of immigrants at the southern border:

• Aaron Clark-Ginsburg, a behavioral and social scientist, leads RAND's Mass Migration Strategy Group, and can discuss climate migration, disasters and community, disasters and health, and disasters and measurement.
• Shelly Culbertson, director of the RAND Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program and a senior policy researcher, can discuss undocumented and asylum-seeking children, implications for host communities and schools, global refugee policy, and comparisons with global mass migration/refugee situations, such as the 2015 migrant crisis in Europe.
• Victoria Greenfield, a senior economist, can discuss national security implications and international social and economic issues, including transnational crime revenues from human smuggling across the U.S. southwest border.
• Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher, can discuss education of undocumented and asylum-seeking children, bilingual education policy, and civic literacy.
• Kelly Klima, a senior engineer, can discuss technologies for border security, community resilience, and the intersection between disaster relief and border security.
• Douglas Ligor, a senior behavioral and social scientist, and former attorney for the Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), can discuss immigration law, policies, and history; border security, migration, asylum, and refugee processing.
• Elina Treyger, a senior political scientist, can discuss homeland security issues with a focus on migration, immigration enforcement, and dis- and misinformation, as well as justice policy, spanning topics in criminal and civil justice, technology, and the law.