The Trump administration is now using the coronavirus pandemic to push for its toughest immigration restrictions yet, working up a plan to reject all asylum seekers and other foreigners crossing the border unauthorized, report Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Michael D. Shear, and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times. “Under the policy, asylum seekers would not be held for any length of time in an American facility nor would they be given due process. Once caught, they would be driven to the nearest port of entry and returned to Mexico without further detention.”

The policy, expected to be officially announced within the next 48 hours, would also apply to the nation’s northern border with Canada. Confirmed cases of coronavirus in Mexico remain at just 82, compared with around 5,600 in the U.S. and more than 470 in Canada.

The administration is happy to frame the crisis as a border security issue, but is doing next to nothing to address the health and safety of migrants, judges, staff or officers in detention facilities or immigration courts – both of which remain open and operating.

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

DETENTION FACILITIES – Advocates and lawyers warn that migrants being kept in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are at high risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19, report Patrick Michels, Laura C. Morel and Aura Bogado for Reveal. “ICE detention centers are breeding grounds for infectious diseases, and the agency’s medical facilities have been harshly criticized by inspectors and human rights organizations.” Just last year, a mumps outbreak spread across multiple ICE detention centers, requiring thousands of detainees to be quarantined.

IMMIGRATION COURTS – While most courts around the country have scaled back sharply amid the coronavirus pandemic, immigration courts to push forward, Josh Gerstein reports for Politico. The Trump administration’s failure to close the courts has sparked anger from immigration judges, defense lawyers and even prosecutors. “The administration’s decision to press on with most hearings has forged an unusual alliance, with the lawyers who advocate for immigrants and those who press for their deportation joining together to call for a temporary halt to hearings.” One lawyer shared a dispatch from a small waiting room filled with 50 asylum seekers and no hand sanitizer.

FEAR – Trust in public programs and services at the local level will be increasingly important over the coming weeks – but the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown threatens to undermine it. Policies like the “public charge” rule, which went into effect last month, “had a chilling effect on legal immigrants seeking out care before it even took effect,” Politico’s Susannah Luthi, Renuka Rayasam and Alice Miranda Ollstein report. Marco Trujillo, a health outreach worker in Cincinnati, told Politico that he spoke with two people who had symptoms consistent with the coronavirus but “didn’t want to go to the hospital because they are afraid, because of their immigration status.”

CLOSED – U.S. immigration offices will also temporarily close amid the coronavirus pandemic, reports Hamed Aleaziz for BuzzFeed News, putting naturalization ceremonies, citizenship and asylum interviews, and other services on hold. The move follows calls from asylum and immigration officers to close offices amid “fears surrounding large group gatherings at offices.” Of course, despite those fears about large gatherings, thousands living in close quarters at the border remain at high risk of contracting the virus.

AT THE BORDER – Speaking of the border: Thousands of asylum seekers at the Texas-Mexico border remain extremely vulnerable to coronavirus, Rick Jervis writes for USA Today. As we noted earlier this week, the administration is forcing thousands of people impacted by the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) policy to live and work in close quarters, even while advising Americans not to gather in groups of ten or more. “In Matamoros, where about 2,000 migrants live in a sprawling outdoor cap where they sleep in tents and share portable bathrooms and sinks, health advocates warned that the coronavirus could spread rampantly. The camp is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville [Texas].”

SUSPENDED – The world’s refugee crisis is about to get worse: Yesterday, UNHCR and IOM announced a temporary measure to “suspend resettlement departures for refugees.” Plus, Reuters reports that “a senior official for the U.N. children's fund, UNICEF, said European border restrictions imposed because of the coronavirus would affect plans to transfer hundreds of children out of ‘dire and dangerous’ refugee camps in Greece.” Millions are going to be stranded in refugee camps. Health care resources will be stretched even further.

Stay safe, stay healthy,

Ali