The United States will end a sweeping pandemic-related expulsion policy that has effectively closed the U.S. asylum system at the border with Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday. 

The Title 42 public health order will remain in effect until May 23, Mayorkas said in a statement. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which issued the order in March 2020 as countries around the world shuttered their borders amid COVID-19 fears, said it was no longer needed to limit the spread of the virus. 

“After considering current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19 (such as highly effective vaccines and therapeutics), the CDC Director has determined that an Order suspending the right to introduce migrants into the United States is no longer necessary,” the CDC said in a separate statement. 

The formal announcement comes after Reuters and other news outlets reported details of the plan on Wednesday. 

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, kept Title 42 in place after taking office in January 2021 despite fierce criticism from his own political party and campaign promises to reverse the restrictive immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. 

Leading Democrats, medical experts and the United Nations have criticized Title 42, saying that it expels migrants to danger in Mexico and that scientific evidence does not support its stated goal of limiting the spread of the virus. 

Several migrants in a nearly 2,000-person encampment in Reynosa, Mexico, told Reuters on Thursday they were hopeful the order would be lifted so they could legally claim asylum in the United States. 

Republicans blasted Biden this week following reports the order would be ended, saying lifting the pandemic restrictions would encourage more migrants to enter illegally at a time when border crossings are already breaking records. 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said earlier this week that although they were preparing to handle a sharp spike in border crossings, it remained unclear whether lifting the COVID-era order would increase migration. 

 
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A program that allows children from Central America into the U.S. to safely rejoin their parents has been reopened and expanded by the Biden administration. But 15 Republican states are attempting to shut down the program because they believe it encourages undocumented immigrants to cross the border. VOA immigration reporter Aline Barros has the story.
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The oldest active park ranger in the United States is hanging up her hat at the age of 100.

Betty Reid Soskin retired Thursday after more than 15 years at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, the National Park Service announced.

Soskin “spent her last day providing an interpretive program to the public and visiting with coworkers,” a Park Service statement said.

She led tours at the park and museum honoring the women who worked in factories during wartime and shared her own experience as a Black woman during the conflict.

She worked for the U.S. Air Force in 1942 but quit after learning that “she was employed only because her superiors believed she was white,” according to a Park Service biography.

“Being a primary source in the sharing of that history – my history – and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” Soskin said in the Park Service statement. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”

Soskin won a temporary Park Service position at the age of 84 and became a permanent Park Service employee in 2011. She celebrated her 100th birthday last September.

“Betty has made a profound impact on the National Park Service and the way we carry out our mission,” Director Chuck Sams said. “Her efforts remind us that we must seek out and give space for all perspectives so that we can tell a more full and inclusive history of our nation.”

Soskin was born Betty Charbonnet in Detroit in 1921 but recalled surviving the devastating Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 while living with her Creole family in New Orleans, according to the Park Service biography.

Her family then moved to Oakland, California, and Soskin remained in the San Francisco Bay Area, where in 1945 she and her first husband founded one of the first Black-owned record stores in the area, the biography said.

She also was a civil rights activist and took part in meetings to develop a general management plan for the Home Front park. She has received several honors.

She was named California Woman of the Year in 1995.

In 2015, Soskin received a presidential coin from President Barack Obama after she lit the National Christmas tree at the White House.

In June 2016, she was awakened in her home by a robber who punched her repeatedly in the face, dragged her out of her bedroom and beat her before making off with the coin and other items. Soskin, then 94, recovered and returned to work just weeks after the attack. The coin was replaced.

Soskin also was honored with entry into the Congressional Record. Glamour Magazine named her woman of the year in 2018.
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Laura Purdy is a U.S. doctor on Ukraine’s front lines. In her case, that’s a computer screen in Tennessee.

“Patients that I have talked to from some of the larger cities in Ukraine are fearful of leaving their homes because of air raid sirens or offshore attacks,” said Purdy, a surgeon who, until 2016, served in the U.S. Army’s units that provide health care to civilians worldwide. “They need/want to speak to a physician but are fearful to venture out to do so.”

Purdy now cares for patients in Kyiv and other cities under Russian attack through Starlink, an internet constellation of some 2,000 satellites operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s private firm SpaceX.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and as of March 30, 1,189 Ukrainians had been killed and 1,901 injured, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.

U.S. doctors are stepping up to provide much-needed advice via telehealth, a practice honed during the pandemic, to the Ukranian soldiers, civilians and refugees injured in the fighting or attempting to manage chronic diseases amid the chaos.

Purdy is just one of the many physicians who have joined Aimee, a 10-year-old telehealth platform headquartered in Silicon Valley. Having built the telehealth systems for the International Space Station and SpaceX, Aimee is staffed by self-described “nerds who want to make a difference” and are now partnering with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health to provide Ukrainians with free telemedicine visits.

By using the Aimee app, Purdy said, patients can get advice and treatment recommendations from a U.S. physician while they remain in a safe location.

Milton Chen, founder and CEO of VSee, the telehealth company that launched Aimee, said a “couple thousand” physicians and a “couple hundred” translators have joined the platform to provide 24/7 telecare in Ukraine. The doctors provide care for battlefield trauma injuries as well as basics such as prenatal care, chronic disease management and mental health services.

“You could do a remote ultrasound; you could connect to a digital stethoscope to listen to someone’s heart and lung sound. All these medical signals will stream live to the physicians — so other than physically touching the patient — and the physician could get quite a bit of information on the patient,” he said via video.

Through telemedicine, Purdy treated a legally blind man who relies on his family for all his daily needs. Purdy helped him set up a free consultation with an ophthalmologist to interpret tests he underwent in Ukraine.

“This occurred in a city that was actively under attack, and we were able to provide advice and support to the patient while allowing him to stay safely sheltered in place,” she told VOA Mandarin.

The lack of medicine is one of the biggest hurdles for patients in Ukraine, said Purdy, who earned her medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

“The pharmacies have run out of medication, or they are closed. So, many times we find patients who we can give medical recommendations to, but they may not have access to the pharmaceuticals that they need to treat the condition they are experiencing,” she said.

And while remote doctors can’t solve challenges such as the lack of insulin for patients with diabetes, they can provide much-needed assistance. Dr. Mohamed Aburawi, founder and CEO of Speetar, a telehealth platform founded in 2017 to operate in Libya, told Forbes that “every day a conflict lasts, the situation worsens, and telehealth provides care, relief and stability to communities and people that need it most. Our own experience in protracted conflict highlights how telehealth maintains continuity of care for refugees, migrants and internally displaced populations.”

Telemedicine can also include teaching patients how to stop bleeding from wounds and injuries, a challenge for citizens in war zones, said Patricia Turner, executive director of the American College of Surgeons, which since 2015 has trained people without medical backgrounds through the Stop the Bleed initiative launched by the White House.

“When you bleed … you can actually die in as quickly as five minutes, so stopping the bleeding helps … save a life,” she told VOA Mandarin.

Two doctors who have family ties to Ukraine and work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, turned to telemedicine and developed a training video for Ukrainians.

Dr. Nelya Melnitchouk, a Ukraine native, came up with the idea for the video, and Dr. Eric Goralnick, who is of Ukrainian descent, helped organize the collaboration between the hospital and the Stop the Bleed initiative, according to The Boston Globe.

The training course can be finished in a few hours, Turner said, and can help health care workers and the public learn how to effectively stop bleeding.

“More than 100 people are being trained every other day,” she said. “We’re doing it via video so you can watch them on YouTube. We’re also doing them live remotely so that we can answer questions.”
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