The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Justice Department could announce another change to the asylum process as soon as today, report Seung Min Kim and Colleen Long of the Associated Press.
According to people familiar with the plan, the change would have some migrants who are coming across the border between ports of entry "be processed first through the asylum system rather than going to the back of the line," Kim and Long report. The administration wants to process recent arrivals quickly, with a decision in months instead of years.
The Obama and Trump administrations also tried to speed asylum decisions. Quicker processing could deter other would-be asylum seekers from risking the journey, though it could also make it more difficult for people with strong claims to find representation and pull together their cases in time.
Meanwhile, the federal government announced visa restrictions on 250 members of the Nicaraguan government in response to "repressive actions" and their government’s complicity in unauthorized migration to the United States, report Steve Holland and Mica Rosenberg of Reuters.
"Actions by the Nicaraguan government are of grave concern. President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo have put in place permissive-by-design migration policies," a DHS statement reads.
Welcome to Thursday’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, Ally Villarreal and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].
CHILDREN — Child migration through the Darién Gap has increased by 40% so far this year, reports Fabiola Zerpa of Bloomberg. The UN estimates in a new report that nearly 160,000 children could traverse the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama this year, compared with 113,000 who crossed last year. According to the report, this would be "the fifth consecutive year of record levels of child migration."
NAVIGABILITY — In New Orleans, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether the section of the Rio Grande where Texas placed floating buoy barriers is navigable, reports John C. Moritz of the Austin American-Statesman. The argument surrounding navigability comes from the U.S. Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. A specific section of it could determine
if the Rio Grande tract with the buoys is subject to federal authority, Moritz notes.
HOTSPOT — San Diego County has become a hotspot for unauthorized migrant crossings in recent months, according to official statistics. With pictures by Robert Gauthier, Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times explores the changing migration patterns along the U.S.-Mexico border. Last month, the sector documented 37,370 arrests, making it the
busiest of the nine Border Patrol sectors for the first time since the 1990s.
DEMOGRAPHIC REALITIES — Immigration is crucial to our country’s demographics and programs including Social Security and Medicaid, Global Refuge President and CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah writes in her op-ed in The Hill. Speaking against recent xenophobic rhetoric, Vignarajah writes, "what nativists consistently miss is that immigrants offer direct economic and tax contributions, demographic
rejuvenation and the health care workforce to adequately care for an aging population." We agree.
P.S. Our hearts are with the families and communities of the eight farmworkers killed and 40 injured in a Florida crash this week. Emily Wunderlich and Juan Carlos Chavez of the Tampa Bay Times have more on the workers’ circumstances, as well as about the man charged after his truck crashed into the bus carrying the workers.
