We are weeks into a global pandemic and it is practically impossible to tell what lies ahead.
But, as I write for Morning Consult, “one outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic that is entirely predictable: We will be led to think of the world, and one other, differently.”
As we barrel through an election year, the immigration narrative is divided into polarizing camps. “Already, one side of the COVID-19 narrative is shaped by claims the virus came from a backward, corrupt, unclean China, facilitated by Democrats’ open-borders ideology, only to be stopped by travel bans. The other side — led by Vice President Biden’s call for a 100-day moratorium on deportations — adds fuel to a raging fire.”
All the while, detention facilities throughout the U.S. and migrant camps along the border offer opportunities for a COVID-19 outbreak that, when you look back at the 1918 influenza pandemic, are a recipe for a legislative environment that could further restrict future immigration.
Julio Ricardo Varela writes in an op-ed for The Washington Post that “[w]e must be vigilant for dangerous xenophobic language, now more than ever. Trump is making his response to the novel coronavirus (which he insists on calling the ‘Chinese’ virus to deflect blame and stoke xenophobia) a political issue. He is returning to what worked for him so well in the past. But we can’t have him distract us with hate and division — the country can’t afford that right now in the face of a global pandemic.”
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
COACH LUMA – One of the things I love about my job is that I get to meet amazing people doing amazing things. In 2007, Luma Mufleh, or Coach Luma, an asylee from Jordan, launched the Fugees Academy, a free private school for low-income refugee children that has taught thousands of children in Atlanta and Columbus. As WBUR’s Yasmin Amer reports, “Luma has been teaching her immigrant students to be proud of their identities, and she's embraced every aspect of hers.” It has been such a pleasure to get to know Luma through the Emerson Collective’s Dial Fellowship.
IMMIGRANTS AID AMERICA DURING COVID-19 – Immigrants are key to combatting COVID-19: “From cleaning away germs to developing cures for them to delivering needed supplies, immigrants are disproportionately engaged in the effort to defeat COVID-19. Indeed, immigrants are overrepresented in nearly every job that is critical during this pandemic.” David Bier at Cato focuses on how we’re safer and healthier because of the contributions of immigrants during the spread of COVID-19: They’re providing health care, researching cures and treatments, cleaning and disinfecting, delivering supplies, producing food and more.
RELEASING NONVIOLENT DETAINEES – There are more than 37,000 detainees closely confined — and highly susceptible to infectious diseases — in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, writes John Sandweg, former acting director for ICE, in an op-ed for The Atlantic. While shifting immigration enforcement actions to focus on criminals is a good first step, “the administration must do more: It must release the thousands of nonviolent, low-flight-risk detainees currently in ICE custody.” In fact, Sandweg writes, “only a small percentage of those in ICE detention have been convicted of a violent crime. Many have never even been charged with a criminal offense. ICE can quickly reduce the detained population without endangering our communities.”
PRIORITIES DURING A PANDEMIC – According to a federal order, immigration lawyers must provide their own masks, gloves and eye protection when visiting detained clients, Daniel Gonzalez reports for the Arizona Republic. In other words, finite amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE) won’t be going to health care workers to treat the sick, because they’ll instead be going to immigration lawyers working with people in ICE detention. “The ICE directive contributed to a growing chorus of calls from immigration groups for the Justice Department to temporarily close all immigration courts and for the government to release immigration detainees, beginning with the most vulnerable, to protect against the spread of the disease inside detention facilities and in immigration courts.”
REMAIN IN LIMBO – Through April 22, hearings for migrants waiting in Mexico through the Trump administrations “Remain in Mexico” program will be rescheduled due to the coronavirus, reports Priscilla Alvarez in CNN. “The administration's so-called Remain in Mexico policy requires migrants, many of whom are from Central America, to wait in Mexico for the duration of their immigration hearings. It has resulted in the creation of makeshift camps where hundreds of migrants have waited for weeks, if not months, in squalid and unsafe conditions.”
Stay safe, stay healthy,
Ali
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