Fetterman Says He Was ‘Shocked’ When Biden Lifted Title 42, Calls Border a ‘Serious Failure’ for Democrats

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said this week that he was “shocked” when the Biden administration lifted Title 42 and still doesn’t know why the decision was made.

“I was shocked when they dropped Article 42,” Fetterman said during an appearance on the All-In podcast released on Wednesday. “In my primary … we all ran on that. That wasn’t controversial. I was stunned when they dropped that.”

Title 42, implemented by the first Trump administration in March 2020, allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, including asylum seekers, to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and was used more than 2.8 million times.

Asked directly what motivated the Biden administration’s decision, Fetterman said: “I don’t know, but I was alarmed, and I was honest.”

Fetterman stopped short of assigning blame for the Title 42 decision to any specific figure within the administration.

He called the aftermath a political reckoning for his party. “We were punished in ’24,” he said. “The border was a serious, serious failure. As Democrats, it’s like holding us accountable.”

The lawmaker added that part of the responsibility of Democrats now is to learn from that situation.

In April 2022, while running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat he now holds, Fetterman publicly broke with the Biden White House on the issue. “We should not end Title 42 until we have a detailed plan in place,” he told Politico at the time. “We still need to fix our broken immigration system as a whole.”

He was not alone as a Democrat with such a stance. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) also stood against lifting the policy ahead of the 2022 midterms. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who at the time chaired the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, said the decision “should be revisited and perhaps delayed” unless the administration produced a satisfactory plan.

When the pandemic-era policy officially expired May 11, 2023, President Joe Biden said the border would be “chaotic for a while.”

Fetterman’s latest remarks came as he remains the only Senate Democrat voting to fund the Department of Homeland Security amid a partial government shutdown of that agency. That shutdown has been in place since Feb. 14, as his fellow Democrats demand reforms to how federal agents conduct immigration enforcement operations following the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis during operations there earlier this year.

On Thursday, Fetterman bucked the party again, being the only Democrat to vote to advance Markwayne Mullin’s DHS secretary nomination to the full Senate.

Fetterman said he supports securing the border and deporting criminals, but argued against targeting individuals who have not committed crimes after entering the country illegally.

“Pennsylvania—our top industry is farming, agriculture—and constantly that’s their issue. Labor, labor, labor. It’s really problematic, targeting otherwise lawful migrants,” he said. “I don’t think that’s what America really wants and honestly that’s not what America needs. They are an important part of our economy.”

He said his wife was a dreamer—an informal term referring to people eligible under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields certain illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation.

“ICE shouldn’t punish a 2-year-old that was brought here and had no idea, at that age. I think they’ve made some important contributions to our nation,” he said, adding he was a “pro-immigration Democrat” but also “the only Democrat” that does not support the current DHS shutdown over funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.