We still have work to do: Halfway through the 2023 fiscal year, total resettlement stands at 18,429, despite a cap of 125,000. If the March pace continues, we’d reach about 55,000 admissions on the year — a vast improvement, but less than half the cap. 

That said, the March totals are a positive sign that the work to rebuild our refugee resettlement infrastructure is starting to bear fruit.  

We share some bittersweet news today as well: Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, our Senior Communications Associate and Forum Daily drafter extraordinaire, is in her last week at the Forum. We can’t thank her enough for her crucial work — and early mornings — to make the Daily what it is. 

Dynahlee, we’ll miss you greatly, and we wish you all the best at the United Nations Foundation! 

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, Clara Villatoro and Katie Lutz. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

IN MEMORIAM — A network of advocates, including family members of victims, are pushing for a memorial to be built where a fire at a Mexican detention facility claimed 40 migrants’ lives, reports Julian Resendiz of Border Report. "I don’t want this to happen to any more migrants. Not because they are migrants but because they are human beings," said Jesus, a Venezuelan migrant who lost his brother Oscar Regalado Silva to the tragedy.  

PHILLY PREPARES — Philadelphia is preparing to welcome more immigrants and refugees to its communities ahead of the forthcoming Title 42 lift, per Jeff Gammage and Ximena Conde of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Using the fall migrant bus transport situation as a learning lesson, Amy Eusebio, director of the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said, "As a city we’re definitely in preparation. We feel ready." 

SERIOUS EFFORTS — With his border plan, President Biden "is trying to flip the script on immigration," Foreign Policy columnist Edward Alden writes. The Uniting for Ukraine program and expanded processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are among the initiatives making an impact. "It has become cliché to say that the U.S. border is broken," Alden writes. "But in the absence of congressional immigration reform … Biden’s new plans are the most serious effort yet to fix it." 

FIRST SALVADORAN BISHOP — Meet the nation’s first Salvadoran-born bishop, Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, via Héctor Alejandro Arzate and Tyrone Turner’s piece on WAMU. Menjivar-Ayala came to the U.S. at age 20 in 1990, during El Salvador’s civil war. He says his being named bishop "is recognition of the entire Hispanic community, which is growing and strong and contributing here in the diocese." 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan