While there was no decision announced regarding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that immigrants who fear torture in their home country can appeal deportations in court, reports Harper Neidig for The Hill.

“In a 7-2 decision, the high court rejected the Trump administration’s argument that foreigners tagged for deportation have no right to judicial review if their request for relief under the international Convention Against Torture (CAT) is denied. The decision will allow immigrants who have been convicted of a crime and designated for deportation to make factual challenges in court when the Department of Justice's Board of Immigration Appeals decides that they do not qualify for deportation protection under CAT.”

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

“IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE” – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is presenting migrant parents detained at the U.S.-Mexico border with an impossible choice: “Separate from your child or stay together in detention indefinitely.” As I told Nancy Bilyeau for The Crime Report, “While America continues to face the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump has leveraged the crisis to crack down on immigration in ways that make our country less safe … Forcing migrant parents to choose between family separation and indefinite detention in crowded facilities does not make us safer.”

WORDS MATTER – The New York City Council voted last week to change how undocumented immigrants are referenced in local laws, rules and documents, reports NBC New York. “New York City officials and law enforcement will no longer be able to use the terms ‘alien’ and ‘illegal immigrant’ to refer to undocumented immigrants. … The term that officials will use going forward will be ‘noncitizen.’” City council Speaker Corey Johnson tweeted that New York is the first major U.S. city to a ban the words from official documents.

BEHIND THE POLICY – In an interview for Forbes with Jeffrey Gorsky, former Chief of the Legal Advisory Opinion section of the Visa Office in the U.S. Department of State, Stuart Anderson dissects the Trump administration’s latest policy to restrict Chinese researchers and graduate students from coming to the U.S. Gorsky says, “The State Department has not issued guidance on how it will implement the new restrictions. It is likely consular officers will deny at the time of the interview those applications they determine meet the criteria cited in the proclamation and put any other questionable but not clearly deniable case into ‘administrative processing’ while the case is sent for interagency clearance … America will lose out on a valuable talent pool and the financial and scientific contributions these students make to U.S. universities and the United States.”

JUDGES’ DISCRETION – For the Los Angeles Times, Andrea Castillo reports how the fate of thousands of migrants in ICE detention centers increasingly depends on the federal judge assigned to their case. “For those who remain detained, the legal twists and turns are anxiety-inducing. In some cases, different judges have rejected or approved petitions brought by detainees with similar medical issues and legal cases. One of those is Marco Montoya Amaya, whose request for release from Mesa Verde was denied by a federal judge in early April because the parasitic infection with which he has been diagnosed is not included in the list of conditions identified by the CDC as high-risk factors for COVID-19.”


“I CAME FOR FREEDOM” – As protests continue across the nation, African refugees in Minneapolis — home to a large and thriving refugee community — are joining the peaceful demonstrations. Tiha Jibi, who came to the city from South Sudan at age 15, told AFP’s Charlotte Plantive: “I came for freedom.” Dismayed by the state of affairs in her new home, Jibi said, “I ended up having two boys, 10 and six, who are afraid because we are not white … I came here as a refugee but not as a white refugee. My permanent home is the U.S. and my permanent color is black. I have to protest.”
STILL SEPARATED – According to an unpublished DHS Inspector General report obtained by Hamed Aleaziz at BuzzFeed News, 40 young migrant children were separated from their families by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — despite assurances otherwise — in 2018. “The report is the latest government document to detail myriad issues with the hastily enforced policy and appears to undermine past statements by senior Trump administration officials, including then-DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The document comes more than two years since the spring of 2018, when the Trump administration announced the so-called zero tolerance policy that targeted those who crossed the border without authorization.”

IN MEMORIAM – The lives of Dr. Ydelfonso Decoo and other immigrant health workers in New York City are being celebrated in Queens with a 20,000-square-foot mural at the Queens Museum commissioned by SOMOS, “a network of 2,500 immigrant physicians that serves thousands of people in the low-income and immigrant community,” reports Li Cohen for CBS News. “Decoo, a Dominican immigrant and pediatrician who lived in Washington Heights, chose to forgo his retirement to treat patients during the coronavirus pandemic. Decoo co-founded SOMOS … he was one of the first doctors in Queens to die from the virus.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali