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Unaccompanied child migrants trying to enter the United States will no longer be denied a chance to seek asylum under new guidance announced by U.S. health authorities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in announcing the change late Friday night, said “that expulsion of unaccompanied noncitizen children is not warranted to protect the public health.” (3/12)

"The fact that we're using COVID as an excuse to keep out asylum seekers at this moment in time, it's just becoming more and more absurd and untenable for the administration," said Blaine Bookey, an attorney at the Center for Gender & Refugees Studies, who is representing the Ukrainian family. For more than a year, the Biden administration has quickly expelled migrants at the southern border under the controversial public health order known as Title 42 — despite repeated calls from Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates to end the Trump-era policy. (Rose, 3/12)

A Ukrainian woman and her three children crossed into the United States on Thursday after being turned away at the US-Mexico border a day earlier, according to the family's attorney. ... For nearly two years, the US southern border has largely been closed off to asylum seekers because of a public health order invoked under the Trump administration at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. (Alvarez, 3/10)

President Biden promised to unravel the “moral and national shame” of the immigration policies enacted by President Donald J. Trump. But that was hardly the position Mr. Biden’s lawyers took in a federal courtroom earlier this year. Appearing in January before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, government lawyers urged the court to let Mr. Biden enforce a restriction imposed by Mr. Trump that allowed migrants to be quickly turned away at the border. ... The government lawyers in Judge Walker’s courtroom were fighting to uphold a Trump-era public health rule allowing the United States to turn away migrants without providing them an opportunity to ask for asylum. (Kanno-Youngs, 3/13)

President Joe Biden last week rolled out an ambitious set of proposals to improve the quality of America’s nursing homes. The plan, released in advance of the State of the Union address, promises to increase federal staff ratio requirements, tighten infection control and take other measures to improve conditions in the places that have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed reforms would affect not just the residents of nursing homes, but also the staff workers — the majority of whom are women, disproportionately women of color — who have kept these centers running through unprecedented times. (Luterman, 3/11)

The Food and Drug Administration will gain authority over Puff Bar and other e-cigarettes made with synthetic nicotine under the government spending bill expected to be signed by President Biden. The bill closes a loophole that allowed Puff Bar to stay on the market—and soar in popularity among teenagers—despite an order from the FDA to stop selling its fruity, disposable vaporizers. After the agency’s order in 2020, Puff Bar reformulated its products to use nicotine that wasn’t derived from tobacco. The FDA regulates tobacco products and smoking-cessation devices such as nicotine gum, but synthetic-nicotine vaporizers haven’t fallen under its jurisdiction, until now. (Maloney, 3/13)