President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pushing to stop applying a public health order, designed to stop the spread of the Chinese coronavirus, to adults arriving with children at the United States-Mexico border.

Early last year, former President Trump invoked the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Title 42 order that gives federal immigration officials authority to quickly detain and return border crossers to their native countries.

Since March 2020, more than 531,600 border crossers have been expelled from the U.S. under the Title 42 order. The Biden administration, in February alone, expelled more than 72,100 border crossers using Title 42.

For weeks, as Breitbart News exclusively reported, the Biden administration has eyed plans to fully end the Title 42 order, which lawmakers have said would cause a tsunami of illegal immigration at the border.

Failing to justify such a move, top DHS officials like Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are pushing to stop applying Title 42 to adults who arrive with children at the border, a source close to DHS told Breitbart News.

The source said there are internal battles occurring at the agency with officials around Mayorkas trying to stop Title 42 from applying to adults arriving with children and other factions wanting to keep the order in place so as not to further overwhelm the border.

“Single adults can spread coronavirus but family units can’t?” the source said.

Since March 2020, nearly 34,000 migrant families have been expelled from the U.S. under the Title 42 order. Should the administration reverse course on this particular group of border crossers, these family units would be processed by federal immigration officials and likely released into the nation’s interior.

This week, a group of House Republicans wrote to Mayorkas demanding answers as to how many border crossers the Biden administration is releasing into the U.S. interior and how many are testing positive for coronavirus after their release.

Reports last week confirmed that more than 100 border crossers released into the U.S. interior had tested positive for the coronavirus. Even after their positive result, the border crossers were free to continue traveling into the U.S.

“… this is a guaranteed super spreader event,” the GOP lawmakers wrote.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.