Trump may ban re-entry of citizens likely to have virus

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration is considering new immigration proposals that would enable border officials to temporarily block American citizens and legal permanent residents (Green Card holders) from returning to the country if they are suspected of being Covid positive and coming from a coronavirus hotspot outside the US.
A draft of the new regulations — which would be unprecedented in its scope and application — is reported to have been distributed to federal agencies seeking feedback by Tuesday. It is not clear when — or whether — it will be approved at all, given the legal challenges that are certain to be mounted if American citizens are not allowed back in their own country.
The US has banned foreigners from entering the country from coronavirus hotspots, but American citizens and legal permanent residents have so far been excepted. Even the whiff of such a move by an administration that is fundamentally inimical to immigration jolted civil liberties advocates and medical experts who said it would not make much of a difference because community transmission was rampant in the US. In fact, many other countries which are leery of American travellers given that the US accounts for a quarter of world’s cases.
According to the draft memo, preventing US citizens and permanent residents entering the country would occur in limited cases — “only in the rarest of circumstances….when required in the interest of public health, and be limited in duration”. The blocking should “include appropriate protections to ensure that no constitutional rights are infringed”, and citizens and legal residents cannot be blocked as an entire class of people, says the memo, whose contents were first reported in New York Times.
The proposal to selectively shutter down the US came even as virus rages across much of America and there is a furious ongoing debate on the reopening of schools. Trump wants them to restart but teachers are spooked, particularly after reports that 90% increase in cases in US children, including nearly 1,00,000 cases since some schools reopened two weeks ago. While Trump argues that children are less likely to contract and transmit the infection, critics say teachers, parents, and vulnerable grandparents may contract it from asymptomatic kids. At the same time, lockdown fatigue is setting in and the administration is banking on working people eager to get back to their jobs to kickstart the economy.