Following President Trump’s order suspending some types of immigration for at least 60 days, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf is now suggesting that more measures aimed at non-immigrant temporary visas could be on the way, report Geneva Sands, Kevin Liptak and Maegan Vazquez at CNN. “That is something that the department has been looking at for the past several months, so we are well underway and look forward to presenting to the president those recommendations for additional steps,” Wolf told Fox News.
Amid Trump’s latest crackdowns on immigration, it is rural America that has the most to lose, write Roberto Gallardo and Bill Bishop for the Daily Yonder. Without immigrants, the population of America’s rural counties would have dropped by more than half a million from 2010 and 2019; immigration kept those losses to only around 200,000. Now, those counties could face a drastic population decline and scarcity of workers.
Meanwhile, the U.S. says it will begin testing some migrants for COVID-19 before deporting them after infections were reported among deportees in Guatemala, Haiti, and Mexico, Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg report for Reuters. The move comes after criticism from foreign governments including Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, and Ecuador, all of which called for testing. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) noted that it will not have enough testing for all deportees and will need to “prioritize.”
Welcome to Friday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected]. Have a safe and healthy weekend, folks.
DEPORTATIONS – The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a decision making it “easier for federal authorities to deport certain immigrants who have committed crimes,” reports Andrew Chung for Reuters. The decision came in the case of Andre Martello Barton, a legal permanent resident from Jamaica and father of four who arrived in the U.S. in 1989, finding him “ineligible to have his deportation cancelled under a U.S. law that lets some longtime legal residents avoid expulsion.” The ruling could impact thousands of immigrants with criminal convictions, including minor offenses, who currently legally reside in the U.S.
SUED – The conservative nonprofit Center for American Liberty is suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom in an effort to block his plan to provide $75 million in financial aid to immigrants in the country illegally who don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, reports Patrick McGreevy with the Los Angeles Times. Newsom has said his plan will support essential workers living in fear of deportation while supporting tens of millions of Californians. “‘California is taking legally justified and morally necessary action to assist all Californians impacted by COVID-19,’ said Jesse Melgar, a spokesman for Newsom. ‘These actions benefit public health and the economic well-being of families and communities hit hardest by this pandemic.’”
WHAT WENT WRONG – In a piece for Univsion, David C. Adams and Andrea Zarate investigate what went wrong at Smithfield Foods, the South Dakota meatpacking plant where more than 900 workers, most of them immigrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa, have been diagnosed with coronavirus. A combination of factors including South Dakota’s failure to institute a stay-at-home order as well as the lack of masks inside the factory contributed to the rapid rise in cases, Adams and Zarate write. “We are going to continue to have a spread (of the virus) because the state has no stay at home order and the governor has not committed to state testing and everybody is going about their daily business,” said Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO.
THE OTHER CURVE – The coronavirus pandemic is producing competing stories about who we are as a nation, writes Robert Jones, CEO and Founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), in an op-ed for Sojourners Magazine. “If history has a lesson for us here, it is this: Where there is a massive wave of suffering and death, a second wave of racism and xenophobia is typically not far behind,” he writes. “Already, xenophobic ideas are being spread from the highest office in the land. There is evidence of a surge of anti-Asian racism on white supremacist websites, and there are steady reports of Asian Americans being targeted. The time for our religious, political, and business leaders to help us flatten this curve is now. If we wait until the xenophobia goes viral, it will be too late.”
HUNTSVILLE – With an estimated 55,000 undocumented immigrants in Alabama ineligible for federal relief amid COVID-19, a coalition of Huntsville organizations are running a food bank out of a church to support the community, reports Chris Joseph for WAFF. The United Church of Huntsville, Huntsville Helping Hands, and the League of United American Citizens (LULAC) are serving thousands of people across five counties from their food bank. “We’ve found families that are in total need of complete food assistance,” said Iglesia Adventista Pastor Angel Rigo, who also noted that families in the undocumented community have been afraid to seek medical help.
A CLOSER LOOK – Yesterday, the Forum released a special edition of our “Only in America” podcast breaking down President’s Trump proclamation suspending some forms of immigration for at least 60 days. I spoke to the Forum’s VP of Policy and Advocacy, Jacinta Ma, about what the policy means for immigrants and for Americans — and about the kinds of solutions we should be pursuing instead. Give it a listen here.
Thanks for reading,
Ali
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