Facing pressure from the business community, the Trump administration is reportedly in talks with Senate Republicans on a deal to expand temporary worker visas to support various industries that are starving for more workers.

Anita Kumar at Politico reports that these talks “are separate from ongoing, more expansive talks about a 600-page draft bill that would grant permanent status to more high-skilled, well-educated immigrants while reducing the number for those who enter the U.S. based on family ties.” President Trump has reportedly decided that a narrow deal “could be worthwhile even if it risks alienating some in his base, said one of the sources, who has spoken to the White House about the issue.”

From El Paso, Texas (subject of one of my favorite songs of all time), where I am speaking at a Texas Tribune event at UTEP on the future of the border region, welcome to the Thursday edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

BORDER CONDITIONS – An Arizona federal judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of a group of migrants suing the U.S. Border Patrol over “extremely cold, overcrowded, unsanitary and inhumane conditions” at its border facilities. Astrid Galvan reports for the Associated Press that the order “makes permanent a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Court Judge David C. Bury issued in 2016 requiring the Tucson Sector to provide clean mats and thin blankets to migrants held for longer than 12 hours and to allow them to clean themselves.” The ruling additionally “bars the agency from holding migrants more than 48 hours if they’ve been fully processed” and bans “the use of bathrooms for sleeping, which came to light during the trial this year.”

BORDER TOURISM – Tourists are heading to South Texas to see the newly constructed wall on private property along the Rio Grande. For Border Report (a treasure trove of border reporting), Sandra Sanchez writes about The Riverside Club, where “a surprising number of patrons are packing the restaurant’s riverboat tours — many eager to see a newly built private border wall just upriver.” Tommy Fisher, who built the 3-mile-long private border wall, told Border Report that “[the] gentleman who runs the Riverside Club told me his business has been super huge since we built the wall … The boat tours run constantly up and down the river now.”

CLIMATE REFUGEES – A “little-noticed” January ruling by the U.N. Human Rights Committee has potentially granted new legal credibility to the asylum claims of refugees displaced by climate change, Slate’s Mekela Panditharatne reports. The committee’s decision on a New Zealand asylum case “made clear that a nation’s forced removal of migrants displaced by the climate crisis could violate their legally protected right to life. … The panel’s decision will allow lawyers in international and domestic courts to use the case’s precedent-setting text and reasoning to argue for clients whose claims are based on conditions created by the climate crisis.”

LAW BREAKING – On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested two men in a Sonoma County courthouse, “flouting a new state law requiring a judicial warrant to make immigration arrests inside such facilities,” report Olga R. Rodriguez and Juliet Williams for the Associated Press. “ICE said California’s law doesn’t supersede federal law and ‘will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly-enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.’” Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “It’s now going to put total fear in the community … People aren’t going to come to court. Victims will refuse to show up. Witnesses will refuse to show up … cases will have to get dismissed.”

MASSACRING THE RULE OF LAW – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sonia Nazario reflects on the refugee roots of her own family’s American story — escaping a violent dictatorship in Argentina — and urges humane policies that protect both refugees and the rule of law in an opinion piece for The New York Times. “Right now, the rule of law is being quietly massacred in the name of keeping asylum-seekers out — a policy most Americans don’t even agree with. … I often get asked: What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand? Well, our laws say we have to help people who are running for their lives.” Last year, for “Only in America,” I spoke to Sonia about the violence pushing many Hondurans from their homes.

THE MYTH OF THE IMMIGRANT BURDEN – In this week’s episode of “Only in America,” we begin our new series, “The Myth of the Immigrant Burden,” by learning about the contributions of immigrants in the trucking industry through the lens of the growth of the nation’s Punjabi trucking community. I talk with Raman Dhillon, head of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, about how the trucking industry is changing and how Punjabi immigrants are stemming its labor shortage. In an industry that historically has been associated with white men, new drivers are bringing new music, food and culture to a critical industry.

Thanks for reading,

Ali