Let’s start with something unifying and uplifting (before we get to walls, Stephen Miller, and impossible choices): A Bishop, a Rabbi, an Islamic ethical advisor and the president of the Texas Buddhist Association penned an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle calling for those receiving stimulus checks — and who can afford to do so — to donate them to their refugee neighbors.

“As faith leaders, we have been approached by some of our congregants who are fortunate not to need the stimulus payment. … We would like to propose that those in this situation consider donating their stimulus to an especially needy group — our refugee neighbors.”

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

WALLS – COVID-19 knows no borders, but the Trump administration is still building a border wall during the pandemic, Reynaldo Leaños Jr. reports in NPR. The president is using the health crisis to justify his push: “Since the pandemic began in the U.S., federal officials have moved to speed up construction of 200 miles of border wall by waiving federal regulations. And they are still filing lawsuits in south Texas to seize private land for the wall” — all at a time when construction and legal filings are more difficult for activists to track.

BEFORE THE VIRUS – Since the early days of the Trump administration, White House adviser Stephen Miller has tried to invoke the president’s public health powers to curtail immigration — then COVID-19 arrived, report Caitlin Dickerson and Michael D. Shear in The New York Times. “One official said the ideas about invoking public health and other emergency powers had been on a ‘wish list’ of about 50 ideas to curtail immigration that Mr. Miller crafted within the first six months of the administration.” Read this one. All the way to the end.

(LONG) BEFORE THE VIRUS – During the Obama administration, Stephen Miller — then a Senate aide — helped draft a bill that would have eliminated the Optional Practical Training (OPT), which helps international students remain in the U.S. and work following graduation, Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes. Now the administration is considering imposing new restrictions on OPT, particularly for Chinese students. Anderson references a Business Roundtable study which found that “[c]ontrary to claims that immigrants displace American workers, scaling back OPT would cause the unemployment rate to rise 0.15 percentage points by 2028.”

NEW YORK – Undocumented New Yorkers face impossible choices: “medical help and exposure, safety or sustenance,” report Adriana Gallardo and Ariel Goodman for ProPublica. In the epicenter of the pandemic, undocumented immigrants now feel alone. “They are losing loved ones but do not qualify for city funding to help bury them. They are getting sick but hesitating to get tested or go to the hospital, balancing their fear of the virus with their fear of exposure to immigration authorities. They are worried about supporting their families abroad as well as those who live with them, weighing whether to keep working perilous jobs or to stay home and somehow keep food on the table.”

WHAT MPP LOOKS LIKE – Before the COVID-19 outbreak, VICE’s Paola Ramos traveled to the largest refugee camp on the U.S.-Mexico border to hear from asylum seekers, lawyers and doctors grappling with the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. “In the absence of governmental aid, migrants have been relying on a network of NGOs and volunteers to provide services in the camp. We meet Cuban doctor Dairon Elisondo Rodriguez, a fellow asylee, who treats patients while he waits for his asylum hearing, and we follow a group of mothers hoping to cross the border to bring their medically high-risk children to safety.”

POLICING COVID-19 – Five police chiefs spoke with the Police Executive Research Forum about their efforts to ensure immigrants receive their public health messages, including disseminating information in multiple languages and reassuring immigrant communities that the police are focused on health and safety — not immigration enforcement. “Because of the ugly spirit of the debate that’s going on at the national level … we had to make even more concerted efforts to build trust with this segment of our population, so they wouldn’t be afraid to come forward when they’re victims of domestic violence or some other crime, or a witness to some violent crime,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo. That has meant providing hundreds of masks to immigrants, who had been afraid to go to mask giveaways or even food giveaways because of their status.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL – ICYMI: Citing “cruel and unusual punishment,” a federal judge in Miami ordered immigration authorities to release hundreds of detainees in South Florida immigration detention centers, Monique O. Madan reports for the Miami Herald. “In a strongly worded 12-page order filed late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has acted with ‘deliberate indifference’ to the condition of its detainees. She ordered the agency to report to her within three days how it plans to cut its non-criminal and medically vulnerable populations by the hundreds.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali