Many industries are struggling these days amidst COVID-19, especially local journalism. As much as the national papers paint immigration’s big picture, local outlets are often one step ahead of the big story as they see and report what is happening on the ground.

So if you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to your local paper.
Welcome to Monday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

IRONY – In a move not without irony, “Guatemala earlier this month became the first nation to publicly refuse deportation flights from the United States” in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus, reports Molly O’Toole in the Los Angeles Times. “With chronic poverty, corruption and violence and dysfunctional healthcare systems, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — Central America’s Northern Triangle — are highly vulnerable to the pandemic, but they are also dependent on the U.S. for economic and security assistance. They have little leverage against a Trump administration clearly determined to continue deportations despite the risk of worsening the virus’s spread.”
MORE DOCTORS AND NURSES – The U.S. needs more foreign doctors and nurses right now, but our immigration policy isn’t helping, Nicole Narea reports in Vox. “But even before the current crisis, the immigration system made it difficult for foreign doctors and nurses to work in the US and go where they’re needed. Doctors may face long wait times for green cards, restrictions on where they can settle geographically, and limitations on where they can practice while they’re waiting for a green card. Nurses, meanwhile, also face long waits for green cards and can’t come to the US under temporary skilled worker visas.” We could fix this.

RAPID DEPORTATION – The COVID-19 pandemic has enabled the Trump administration to implement a “rapid-fire” deportation process at the southern border, reports Nick Miroff for The Washington Post. “Migrants who cross into the United States illegally are being expelled to Mexico in an average of 96 minutes under emergency coronavirus measures now in force across the U.S. southern border.” These new rules permit border patrol agents to process migrants “in the field,” even before they step inside a U.S. border patrol station.

IMMIGRATION COURTS – The Justice Department announced that hearings for immigrants not currently detained — including asylum seekers — will be postponed until May 1, reports Charles Davis in Business Insider. The announcement “falls short of increasingly loud demands — from judges, prosecutors, lawmakers, and public health experts — to completely shut down the nation's immigration courts during the pandemic.” For now, cases for people already detained will continue: “the vast majority of the country's 68 immigration courts remain open, with judges continuing to hear cases involving detained immigrants — including thousands who are seeking asylum, many of them children.”
“LIKE SITTING DUCKS” – U.S. citizens with loved ones in immigration detention “are sounding the alarm and urging the release of nonviolent detainees with underlying health conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ali Gostanian and Caitlin Fichtel report for NBC News. People in detention centers are “sitting ducks for the spread of this virus,” said Andrea Flores, deputy director of policy at the ACLU. There are currently 37,000 people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention nationwide. “María Vasquez, from Houston, is concerned about her father, Román Vasquez, 59, who is currently detained at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas — the same facility where an employee tested positive for the virus on Monday, according to a statement from the GEO Group that operates the facility.”

“AT LEAST FOR NOW” – A federal judge rejected a request to release dozens of immigrant families because of coronavirus, but did order immigration authorities to comply “with federal guidelines for preventing transmission of the virus in places like the Texas and Pennsylvania detention centers where those families are held,” Josh Gerstein reports for Politico. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg said that “calls for him to force immediate releases went too far — at least for now.”

STIMULUS Q&A – It’s hard to keep track of who is eligible for what in the $2 trillion economic stimulus package signed by President Trump on Friday. The Wall Street Journal’s Michelle Hackman provides a helpful Q&A, clearly laying out that mixed-status families are not eligible for cash assistance, but immigrants are able to be tested for COVID-19 at public health clinics — however, “resources at these centers are even more limited than the nation’s wider health-care system.”

SYRIANS STEP UP – Yesterday we shared how difficult things are in Syria. Today, we’re looking at a story about how a network of Syrian refugees in Switzerland is helping their vulnerable neighbors during the pandemic. Tim Gaynor and Elisabet Diaz Sanmartin write for UNHCR: “The network comprises 26 volunteers, 18 of them Syrian. So far the group estimates it has shopped for 100-200 people in Geneva and Lausanne, and their volunteer network is growing by the day.” As Shadi Shhadeh, a Syrian refugee who helped mobilize the network, said: “We lived, and we are still living, a crisis as refugees. … That makes us probably in a better position to understand that there is a crisis and how to help.”

Stay safe, stay healthy,

Ali