Biden asks Congress to extend COVID-19 deportation ban that will expire this week Reuters

Authors: David Shepardson and Doina Chaku

WASHINGTON (Reuters)-The White House said that US President Joe Biden asked Congress on Thursday to extend the eviction order to protect millions of US renters and their families. The ban will expire this week because of the number of coronavirus infections. Surge.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said last month that it would not extend the deportation ban beyond July 31. CDC did not immediately comment on Thursday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supported Biden’s push, while the office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer did not immediately comment. Pelosi spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said: “We are exploring all the options for doing this.”

According to a study by the Aspen Institute and the COVID-19 Deportation Defense Project, more than 15 million people currently live in households that are in arrears.

These 6.5 million families owe the landlord more than $20 billion in total. The U.S. Treasury Department quoted U.S. Census data earlier this month as saying that approximately 1.2 million households reported that they are likely to face deportation within the next two months.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to pass the CDC’s residential eviction ban to curb the spread of COVID-19 and prevent homelessness during the pandemic.

“In my opinion, the CDC needs clear and specific congressional authorization (through new legislation) to extend the moratorium beyond July 31,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, who voted for the moratorium One of the five judges who banned.

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said: “In view of the recent spread of Delta variants, including those Americans who are most likely to face deportation and lack of vaccinations, President Biden will strongly support the CDC’s decision to further extend the deportation moratorium.”

But she added, “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made it clear that this option is no longer available.”

Some states choose to extend the deportation moratorium beyond July 31, for example, New York, whose deportation moratorium was extended to August 31.

The White House stated that Biden also asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Veterans Affairs to extend their respective deportation bans to the end of September to protect Americans living in federally insured single-family homes.

Earlier this week, the National Apartment Association, which has 82,600 members and collectively manages more than 9.7 million apartments, sued the US government for billions of dollars in unpaid rent.

Congress has allocated 46.5 billion U.S. dollars for federal rent relief, but the states have only issued a small portion of it. The apartment group said it expects to have $26.6 billion in unpaid rents in addition to congressional appropriations.