The Trump administration is expected to issue a public health order recognizing illegal aliens as potential risks for spreading disease in a move that would restrict immigration.
The potential move, reported by CNN, could mimic President Donald Trump’s March 2020 decision to implement Title 42, a public health order that limited immigration in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller previously told The New York Times in 2023 that Trump would reimplement Title 42, explaining that a renewal of the order may reference “severe strains of the flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like R.S.V. and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration being a public health threat and conveying a variety of communicable diseases.”
The new order, according to the CNN report, may include references to measles or tuberculosis, though it is not said to have been completed yet. The order could be issued as soon as this week. It could prevent migrants from claiming asylum if it mimics the stipulations of the previous Title 42 order, which was revoked by the Biden administration.
If the Trump administration does implement a public health order addressing the role of mass immigration in the spread of communicable diseases, it would be the latest step from the White House to curtail illegal border crossings.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently announced that the federal agency will be launching “a nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave our country NOW or face deportation with the inability to return to the U.S.”
Illegal border crossings into the United States dropped drastically in January, and fell even more precipitously in the first days of the Trump presidency. “From Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85% from the same period in 2024, according to data obtained by ABC News,” the White House celebrated. “In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93%.”
The administration has also launched its mass deportation campaign and is currently working to prepare the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for up to 30,000 illegal alien detainees.
