The incoming Trump administration is gathering a list of countries willing to accept migrants whose home countries refuse to take them back after their deportation from the United States, reports Julia Ainsley of NBC News.  

According to sources close to the incoming administration, the list includes the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Panama and Grenada. Whether deportees could legally work and live in these third countries is unclear.  

Such deportees, who could number in the hundreds of thousands, could be displaced permanently and forced to live in countries where they do not know the culture or people, and possibly not the language, Ainsley notes.  

Meanwhile, some Republicans are subtly challenging some of Trump’s immigration promises Greg Sargent writes in The New Republic.  

Sargent highlights concerns we’ve previously noted from the agriculture and construction industries — as well as a must-read piece about Dalton, Georgia, by The Wall Street Journal’s Cameron McWhirter and Arian Campo-Flores, with photos and video by Nicole Craine. 

In contrast to Trump’s narrative, immigration is one of the "potential keys to revitalization," Sargent concludes. 

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, Soledad Gassó Parker, Camilla Luong, Clara Villatoro and Becka Wall. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

JADDOU — USCIS Director Ur Jaddou spoke out for "documented Dreamers" during a House subcommittee hearing yesterday, reports Andrew Kreighbaum of Bloomberg Law. Congress can offer certainty to this population of more than 200,000 people who risk aging out of legal status while their parents await permanent residency, Jaddou said. She also addressed the agency’s backlogs: "Instituting technology throughout our processes is the number one thing we can do to make us work smarter, faster, and safer for the American people and that’s what we’re doing." 

HAITI DEPORTATIONS — Amid escalating violence and chaos in Haiti, the United States continues to send deportation flights, reports Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald. Last month the violence caused the U.S. to ground flights to the country. Despite continuing safety and human rights concerns, U.S. officials deported 70 Haitian nationals on Tuesday.  

TEXAS’ EFFORTS — Some Floridians are frustrated by their state having sent law enforcement officers to Texas to help with border enforcement, reports Gabb Schivone of The Border Chronicle. They include "a member of the Florida Highway Patrol Advisory Council who highlighted staff shortages as a result of DeSantis’s ‘massive waste of resources.’" Schivone goes on to look at the regulations on, and costs of, out-of-state troopers as Trump administration enforcement efforts loom. 

‘ESSENCE OF AMERICA’ — The ongoing debate over birthright citizenship in the United States is about more than legal jargon, Bill Britt writes in his Alabama Political Reporter column. "To deny citizenship to those born here is to deny the essence of America itself," he writes. "Let us not forsake these ideals for the fleeting allure of exclusion, for America’s strength has always been in its embrace, not its rejection, of those seeking a place among us."  

ASYLUM ADVOCACY — In its remaining weeks, the Biden administration should act to help asylum seekers, Ari Sawyer and Yael Schacher of Refugees International write in a USA Today op-ed. The administration "has a last chance to prevent an impending disaster by working with the Mexican government to expand access to asylum at land border ports of entry," they write.  

Thanks for reading,  

Dan 

P.S. About those remaining weeks — Jewish and Christian congregations in North Carolina are increasing their efforts to resettle as many refugees as possible before Trump takes office, reports Yonat Shimron of Religion News Service.