The Forum Daily | Monday, October 23, 2023
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National Immigration Forum
 

THE FORUM DAILY

 

Editor’s note: Oops! Because of a technical glitch earlier, we’re now sending the correct, final edition of today’s Daily. 

For many migrants fleeing danger in their countries of origin, faith is sustenance, reports María Teresa Hernández of the Associated Press.

José Guadalupe Torres of Mexico said a drug cartel threatened his family, forcing them to flee. They’re now in Tijuana. "We parted ways to be safe," he said. "But God has always been with us."

"This is the precise time to preach the word of God," said Albert Rivera, an evangelical pastor at a Tijuana shelter housing nearly 400 migrants.

U.S. border numbers from September and fiscal year 2023, released over the weekend, are high. Some perspective: Last fiscal year about 430,000 migrants were processed at official ports of entry, which is safer and more orderly.

Governments throughout the Americas are responding to unprecedented migration. Costa Rica and Panama announced that thousands will be bused from the Darién Gap north to the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border, report Megan Janetsky and Javier Córdoba of the Associated Press. Buses are taking between 1,500 and 2,000 people a day to migrant camps along this border.

Yesterday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hosted officials from Latin American and Caribbean countries — but not the United States — to discuss regional migration, Syra Ortiz Blanes and Jacqueline Charles report in the Miami Herald. The summit’s goal, per Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena, is a regional approach "to discourage migration via economic programs, address Washington's sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba and discuss ‘labor mobility pathways’ to the United States," reports Sofia Miselem of AFP.

And mark your calendars: On Nov. 3, President Biden plans to host a different group of leaders (with some overlap) at an Americas Summit, Margaret Brennan and Ed O'Keefe of CBS News report.

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

BILL SUPPORT — With support from advocates and in the business and faith communities, more than three dozen organizations nationwide have signed on to a campaign to push the bipartisan Asylum Seekers Work Authorization Act, reports Kelley Bouchard of the Portland Press Herald. Versions of the bill in the House and Senate would reduce asylum seekers’ wait times for work permits from six months to 30 days, as the Forum has noted.

SETTLEMENT — A group of immigrant detainees have reached a settlement in their lawsuit that claimed Georgia’s largest ICE detention center broke federal anti-slavery laws, reports Lautaro Grinspan of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Plaintiffs said they were forced to work in the facility or face severe punishments. The settlement includes confidential benefits to individual plaintiffs and requires detention center operator CoreCivic to give detainees an outline of their rights if they choose to take part in the Voluntary Work Program.

MIRROR — The Dominican Republic’s approach to its border with Haiti and treatment of Haitians have multiple parallels to the United States, Lorgia García Peña, a writer, activist and scholar, argues in an op-ed for The New York Times. Haiti is currently experiencing gang violence and the effects of a barely functioning government. García Peña contends that "the Dominican Republic and the rest of the international community, particularly the United States, must take effective and compassionate measures that can support Haitians."

NEW LIFE — Amaury Pacheco was a poet and freedom fighter in Cuba before his detention and escape to the United States. Now he’s trying to build a new life here thanks to humanitarian parole under the program the Biden administration launched last October, reports Daniel Rivero of WLRN. Pacheco reunited with his wife and five of their six children and hopes to receive his work permit soon and resume his life in the art world.

Thanks for reading,

Dan