We’re entering a critical moment in the spread of COVID-19.

Infection rates are spiking outside major metropolitan areas while governors relax restrictions in places like Alabama, Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Tennessee, NBC News reports. As we have seen from outbreaks in some of these states’ food processing plants, these are communities with large, isolated and essential immigrant communities.

Speaking of essential, nearly a third of workers on the frontlines in Florida’s pandemic response are immigrants — including some with and some without legal status, reports Lautaro Grinspan in the Miami Herald.

Interesting statistic: “not only are immigrants over-represented overall — they make up 28% of all essential workers, compared to just 21% of the state’s total population — but they also account for at least 20% of each of the six industries classified as essential.”

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

“ARCANE” – Under the guise of COVID-19, the Trump administration has used public health laws to deport refugees and children at the border, Lucas Guttentag and Stefano M. Bertozzi write in a New York Times opinion piece. “The administration has weaponized an arcane provision of a quarantine law first enacted in 1893 and revised in 1944 to order the blanket deportation of asylum-seekers and unaccompanied minors at the Mexican border without any testing or finding of disease or contagion. Legal rights to hearings, appeals, asylum screening and the child-specific procedures are all ignored.” Some 20,000 people have been deported under this order — including at least 400 children — in just the first couple of weeks.

“SECRETIVE” – There are roughly 1,800 minors in the U.S. immigration detention system —the largest in the world, and one riddled with COVID-19, report Molly O’Toole and Cindy Carcamo in the Los Angeles Times. “Trump administration attorneys have argued in court that children are safer from COVID-19 in custody — even as the government quietly ramps up efforts to deport them. In recent weeks, officials have pulled scores of children and parents from detention in secretive operations to remove them from the U.S., according to lawyers, migrants’ affidavits and the receiving countries. Some were sick. A number were challenging administration policies in court.”

STATUS – Christina and Jose have built a life together with four children in Fort Worth, Texas, where Christina works for UPS and Jose works in construction. But, as Joe Davidson writes in The Washington Post, while grappling with lost hours and lower wages because of the pandemic, Christina and Jose face another problem: “Despite paying taxes, the entire family is prohibited from receiving the payments [from the CARES Act] because one member, Jose, does not have a Social Security number. Christina and their children are U.S. citizens, Jose is not.”
FEARS – In the context of the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, many immigrants — including those who for years have worked and paid taxes — are wondering if it is safe to apply for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, reports Alina Selyukh for NPR. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman told NPR “that unemployment is an ‘earned benefit’ that isn't considered for the public charge review,” but as Allen Orr of the American Immigration Lawyers Association put it: “The perception is the problem, not the reality … The law has become so complex that — first, there's a financial barrier of seeing an attorney. And then in the [news], you constantly hear you're not welcome.” For Wisconsin’s Fox 11 News, Kia Murray reports on an undocumented woman who faces what so many immigrants face: “No income, no insurance and running out of savings, still she says the worst hasn’t happened. If anyone in her family contracted the virus, she fears she wouldn’t be able to pay the bill. She says it’s a concern that worries her more than questions about her citizenship.”
COLORADO – Advocates in Colorado are working to ensure the state passes legislation to provide some form of relief to immigrants during COVID-19, reports Saja Hindi for The Denver Post. “Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat, is working on a bill to expand the state’s earned income tax credit to include immigrants who live in the country illegally but pay taxes.” Two other state lawmakers, including the Colorado House majority leader, are co-sponsoring a bill that gives the Department of Public Health and Environment the power to inspect — and hold accountable — facilities that house immigrants, including detention centers. Another legislator is working on a bill “that would allow people who’ve received a program violation for one type of assistance program not to be banned from all types of public assistance.”

ESSENTIAL, SORT OF – The Trump administration has deemed millions of lettuce cutters, cherry pickers, peach packers and others to be “essential workers” — but it’s doing little to ensure these individuals remain healthy during the pandemic, Helena Bottemiller Evich and Liz Crampton report in Politico [paywall]. While the CDC has issued guidelines for farm labor, the administration hasn’t made them mandatory. “Farmworkers have long lived in the shadows of the American economy, an itinerant community that includes low-income citizens, about 250,000 legal guest workers from Mexico and Central America and hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants … Now, labor advocates are warning that continuing to ignore this vulnerable population not only threatens lives but endangers the food supply.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali