February 22, 2024

Humane Solutions That Work: 10 Ways The Biden Administration Should Reshape Immigration Policy

Heidi Altman, NIJC, Feb. 21, 2024 "For too long, extremist lawmakers and commentators have shaped the immigration debate through misinformation and rhetoric that demonizes people seeking safety and a better life. The result is a punitive, enforcement-oriented approach to immigration policy that has caused great harm and worsened humanitarian and operational challenges in the midst of a global increase in forced...

February 21, 2024

A New Way Forward for Employment-Based Immigration: The Bridge Visa

Julia Gelatt and Muzaffar Chishti, MPI, Feb. 2024 "Immigration is expected to be the only driver of U.S. population increases 20 years from now, and already, immigrants and their U.S.-born children are sustaining labor force growth. Yet, U.S. employment-based visa policies—which were last revised in 1990, before most Americans had access to the internet and when manufacturing was the top industry of employment...

February 21, 2024

Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton Sues El Paso Charity Over...What?

William Melhado, Texas Tribune, Feb. 20, 2024 "A Catholic nonprofit that operates several shelters in El Paso sued the Office of the Attorney General earlier this month to delay the release of records after the state agency demanded the immediate release of extensive documentation about the immigrant clients that it serves along the border. The Consumer Protection Division of the attorney general’s office...

February 20, 2024

The Migrant "Crisis" Is About Work Permits And Planning

Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic, Feb. 19, 2024 [free gift link!] "Sometimes the best way to understand why something is going wrong is to look at what’s going right. The asylum seekers from the border aren’t the only outsiders in town. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought a separate influx of displaced people into U.S. cities that quietly assimilated most of them. “We have at least 30...

February 20, 2024

What Would You Do If The Border Patrol Threw Your Life-Saving Medications In The Trash?

It's Not Trash, It's Peoples' Belongings: A Q&A with Noah Schramm from the ACLU FROM HOPE TO HEARTBREAK: The Disturbing Reality of Border Patrol's Confiscation of Migrants' Belongings "U.S. Border Patrol has confiscated and trashed: Medications and medical devices that migrants need to treat acute and chronic health conditions such as seizure disorders, high blood pressure, asthma...

February 20, 2024

Webinar Today! - The Refugee System: A Sociological Approach (Feb. 20, 2024)

Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility " Join us online for a conversation with David FitzGerald, the co-author of The Refugee System: A Sociological Approach David FitzGerald will discuss why some people facing violence and persecution flee. Others stay. How do households in danger decide whom should go, where to relocate, and whether to keep moving? What interests and conditions in countries...

February 18, 2024

What Will It Take to Eliminate the Immigration Court Backlog?

Donald Kerwin, Brendan Kerwin, JMHS, CMS, January 29, 2024 "This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the...

February 15, 2024

How Big Data and the Surveillance State Collude to Undermine Immigrant Rights

Prof. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, Feb. 1, 2024 " A decade ago, when New Mexico legislators changed the state’s laws so that unauthorized migrants could get driver’s licenses , they had people like Maximo Olivas-Perea in mind. A longtime resident of Santa Fe, Olivas-Perea did not have the federal government’s permission to live in the United States. But here he...

February 14, 2024

White House Announces DED for Certain Palestinians

White House, Feb. 14, 2024 "Following the horrific October 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, and Israel’s ensuing military response, humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territories, and primarily Gaza, have significantly deteriorated. While I remain focused on improving the humanitarian situation, many civilians remain in danger; therefore, I am directing the deferral of removal of...

February 13, 2024

Outmatched: The U.S. Asylum System Faces Record Demands

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, MPI, Feb. 2024 "Known for its long tradition of providing refuge, the U.S. humanitarian protection system is under significant strain at a time of mass displacements globally, a backlog of 2 million asylum applications, and record arrivals of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Biden administration has turned to alternate pathways to provide temporary protection to some...

February 12, 2024

Courting Disaster: Rights at Risk in Omaha Immigration Court

ACLU Nebraska, Feb. 9, 2024 "A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska paints a stark picture of people’s experiences in the Omaha immigration court, a court that is already known as one of the nation’s toughest for asylum seekers . The civil rights organization says in-person observations from more than 500 hearings demonstrate that Omaha immigration court judges are routinely...

February 12, 2024

Congress Must Include Protections for Dreamers in Immigration Compromises: Letter

Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, Feb. 12, 2024 "In this letter , the Presidents’ Alliance Steering Committee addresses the President, Vice President, and Congressional leaders, urgently calling for the incorporation of relief measures for Dreamers within any bipartisan compromise. Against the backdrop of legal uncertainties surrounding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals...

February 12, 2024

A Tempest-Tost Book Review

Welcome the Wretched, by Prof. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández What do 21 Savage (Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph) and Justin Bieber have in common? At least two things: they are successful pop singers and they are not U.S. citizens. Bieber is white, Canadian, and (as best we can determine without seeing his passport) able to live, work and travel in and out of the USA by virtue of his...

February 12, 2024

New Immigration Court Data Show Sharp Drop in New Cases, Increase in Case Closures: TRAC

TRAC, Feb. 9, 2024 "According to the latest court records the number of incoming cases declined substantially in January 2024, when the Immigration Courts received 154,057 new cases, a drop of over 110,000 in monthly new arrivals at the Court compared to December. At the same time, Court completions last month jumped to a new record high with 76,679 closures, which is 45 percent greater than they were at this time...

February 08, 2024

Staffing Co. Pays Feds $20K to Settle Citizenship Discrimination Claim

DOJ, Feb. 7, 2024 "The Justice Department announced today that it has secured a settlement agreement with Latitude Inc. (Latitude), a staffing company in Hanover, Maryland. The agreement resolves the department’s determination that Latitude violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by discriminating against certain non-U.S. citizens with permission to work in the United States and excluding them...

February 08, 2024

DOJ Pays $1.2M to Settle Sexual Harassment Suit Regarding Immigration Judge Scott D. Laurent

Here is the complaint. Here is the settlement. "Wendy Musell, who represents Escoto, told Law360 that she believes the judgment acknowledges the harassment and abuse her client faced. Tonette J. Jaramilla, who also represents Escoto, called the award "historic." "The $1.2 million judgment is historic, in that the DOJ is taking public accountability for a federal judge's harassing and retaliatory...

February 07, 2024

The Great Escape: Immigration Slavery in America - A True Story of Forced Labor and Liberation (Video)

Free Video "Author Saket Soni and panelists discuss his book The Great Escape , which tells the astonishing true story of a group of immigrants trapped in the largest human trafficking scheme in modern U.S. history. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of modern-day forced labor, The Great Escape — named a 2023 best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, and Amazon — takes us...

February 06, 2024

“Endless Nightmare”: Torture and Inhuman Treatment in Solitary Confinement in U.S. Immigration Detention

Physicians for Human Rights, Feb. 6, 2024 " This report – a joint effort by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRCP), and researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) – provides a detailed overview of how solitary confinement is being used by ICE across detention facilities in the United States, and its failure to adhere to its own...

February 05, 2024

How Much Has Texas Spent to Expel Migrants? $124 Million Dollars!

Monica Madden, KXAN, Feb. 2, 2024 "Texas has spent more than $124 million sending buses of migrants to sanctuary cities, according to records obtained by Nexstar. According to documents Nexstar obtained, Texas has paid $124,603,616.19 to bus more than 100,000 migrants from the state’s border communities to Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles as of Jan. 10. That equals...

February 05, 2024

ICE Subjected Immigrants in Detention to Unnecessary Surgeries, Report Finds

Raul Pinto, Immigration Impact, Feb. 2, 2024 "The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (OIG) published a report last month finding that nearly one-third of medical procedures performed on immigrants in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody were not properly authorized. The report found that ICE improperly authorized 32% of major surgeries performed on individuals...

February 04, 2024

Expert: "Closing" the Border Would Violate Asylum Law

Maria Ramirez Uribe, PolitiFact, Feb. 2, 2024 "President Joe Biden says he has done everything under his authority to try to reduce illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border, and that he’ll be able to do more once Congress passes a new bill. But Republicans disagree. Biden said Jan. 26 that he’s waiting for a bipartisan bill being negotiated in the Senate to give him more resources and "a...

February 02, 2024

Expert: Texas Statute a "Frontal Assault" on Federal Immigration Law

David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2024 "For more than a century, immigration and border enforcement have been seen as falling exclusively under federal control, and when states tried to exert a greater role, courts shut them down. Texas is now moving to challenge that legal interpretation with the more conservative Supreme Court majority. And the outcome may turn on a lone 2012 dissent by the late conservative...

January 31, 2024

Chevron, Brand X, Auer, Kisor and Immigration Law: It's Complicated

Cyrus D. Mehta and Kaitlyn Box have thoughts: "The Supreme Court on January 17, 2024 heard arguments in two cases – R elentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo – that may determine whether courts will continue to give deference to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous federal statute as held in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense...

January 30, 2024

Expert: On Balance, EB-5 Investor Visa "A Good Program"

Sheelah Kolhatkar, New Yorker, Jan. 29, 2024 "For five hundred thousand dollars (the amount has since risen to nine hundred thousand), foreign investors and their families became eligible for green cards, so long as that money succeeded in creating at least ten jobs. “On balance, it’s a good program,” Stephen Yale-Loehr , a law professor at Cornell, said, “in that projects that couldn’t...

January 30, 2024

Expert: Migrants Will Keep Coming "No Matter What"

Nell Salzman, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 28, 2024 "As negotiations faltered Friday, Biden released a statement saying a bipartisan group of senators have been working around the clock over the past two months to address the border crisis and that the deal being hashed out would empower him to shut down the border. ... “People who are fleeing likely don’t read The New York Times. They are going to come no...