As the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule went into effect yesterday, NPR’s Shannon Dooling reported from Boston on teach-ins that local advocates are holding to educate their communities on the impact.

“One of the biggest fears is that parents will pull their kids out of public benefit programs out of fear that it could hurt the family's immigration status,” reports Dooling.

According to Maria Gonzalez Albuixech, an advocate with Health Care for All in Massachusetts, “The biggest problem right now is people who already have a green card thinking that that's going to impact their citizenship. We hear that story all the time, and that is incorrect.”

Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

RETURNED – For the first installment of “Returned,” a multi-part series examining the U.S. asylum system, Kate Morrissey at the San Diego Union-Tribune tells the heartbreaking story of Bárbara, a Nicaraguan asylum seeker fleeing violence at the hands of “president-turned-dictator” Daniel Ortega’s regime and awaiting American asylum in Mexico. “Bárbara is one of an estimated 88,000 Nicaraguans who have fled the country since April 2018 because of its political crisis, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. … Many people returned to Mexico under the [Trump administration’s Migration Protection Protocols, or ‘Remain in Mexico’] program give up on their cases. But Bárbara believes she has no other choice but to wait.”

EMBEZZLED – Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the FBI is actively investigating the potential embezzlement of half a million dollars from the union’s El Paso branch, A.C. Thompson and Jeff Ernsthausen report for ProPublica. “The unfolding financial scandal in the El Paso sector, one of the busiest and most important in the country, is likely to raise fresh questions about the integrity of the agents tasked with policing the southern border. Staffed and run largely by active-duty agents, the El Paso local represents the interests of more than 1,400 Border Patrol employees stationed across west Texas and New Mexico.”

BREXIT BLOWBACK – The Economist weighs in on the U.K.’s latest immigration restrictions as it exits the EU, and the damaging implications Brexit could have on Britain’s economy. “The unemployment rate is just 3.8% and there are more than 800,000 unfilled job vacancies in Britain. Firms worry about cutting off the flow of lower-skilled European migrants at a time of what looks like full employment.”

IMPLEMENTED – The Trump administration’s expanded travel ban went into effect Friday, restricting immigration from Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan, and barring citizens from Sudan and Tanzania from the diversity visa program. Monsy Alvarado and Alan Gomez at USA Today report on the effects that the entry restrictions are having on communities in Kansas and New Jersey. “It's mostly affecting people here, not the people in Nigeria … We are the ones here, we are the ones who have relatives, parents, spouses that are over there that may eventually want to live here,” said Anthony Afolo, president of the Newark African Commission.

GEORGIA DREAMS – As the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) remains in the balance, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers in Georgia have both recently introduced bills in the state legislature to help Dreamers go to college, report Eric Stirgus and Amanda C. Coyne in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Charles Kuck, a local immigration attorney who has represented the interests of DACA participants in various legal disputes, said the bipartisan support stems, in part, from lawmakers eager to help businesses hire more college-educated workers. State leaders repeatedly recite statistics showing a future gap in qualified employees in Georgia.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali