Noorani's Notes

The context for President Trump’s biggest issue, immigration, is completely different in 2019 than it was in 2015. The National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, “Today it’s nativism rather than uncontrolled migration that is prominently associated with disorder, lawlessness, and terror. Voters may want a total and complete shutdown of restrictionist executive orders until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Meanwhile, immigration advocates have filed a sweeping, first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleging that the Trump administrations’ policies and lack of oversight have led to major lapses in medical care for detained immigrants — lapses that have resulted in the deaths of 24 people. Although detainees have long faced inadequate health care, the administration’s focus on boosting the number of migrants in detention has exacerbated the problem, according to Renuka Rayasam of Politico. The number of immigrants in detention has risen by 60% under the Trump presidency, without any additional staff or resources deployed to address the mounting health care needs.

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes.

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RIP – Ahead of a six-day march from Boston to Dover, New Hampshire, faith leaders and immigrant advocates held a symbolic funeral procession for the children who have died in custody or trying to cross the border. The 76-mile march is aimed at getting elected officials and candidates to commit to ending detention and deportation of immigrants, reports Katie Lannan of State House News Service. Rev. Andre Bennett, youth pastor at Zion Baptist Church, says he wants “to let all elected officials and presidential contenders know that we will not look away.”

“NO COMMENT” – When presented with an opportunity to weigh in on the impact of the administration’s proposed changes to the “public charge” rule, the Department of Veterans Affairs submitted a “no comment” response, according to ProPublica’s Yeganeh Torbati, Isaac Arnsdorf and Dara Lind. As a result, “Active-duty military members can accept public benefits without jeopardizing their future immigration status; veterans and their families, however, cannot.” My response to this unbelievably cruel treatment of our nation’s military veterans? This is a family newsletter, so I’ll have to go with, “No comment.”

SOCIAL SECURITY – Immigrants are often mistakenly blamed for the failing of Social Security, but as Sean Williams writes in The Motley Fool, recent data suggests that immigrants are vital to its existence. Immigrants with lawful status are typically young when they arrive and spend the majority of their lives paying into Social Security via the payroll tax like all naturalized U.S. citizens. Undocumented workers, the most frequent target of attacks, contribute upwards of $13 billion a year to Social Security, with no ability to collect the benefit in the future when they retire — meaning they only bolster the system.

AFTER THE RAID – In the wake of arrests across seven poultry plants in Mississippi, hundreds of children find themselves parentless and floating between relatives and babysitters; some are simply homeless. The economic consequences of mass job loss will reverberate through the state when September rent payments are due. Slate’s Henry Grabar reports that “the fallout from the country’s largest workplace raids in years has blanketed the Hispanic community here in sadness, fear, and desperation.”

DACA – Lawyers at the Department of Justice have tried to tell the Supreme Court that President Trump in fact has the right to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The brief filed Monday will be a huge legal test of the president’s power over our country’s immigration policies as the high court is scheduled to hear arguments about the fate of the program this November, reports Michael Shear of the New York Times. Lawyers seeking to protect the DACA program will file response briefs in the coming weeks.

GOOGLE – As of yesterday, over 1,000 Google employees have signed a petition asking company leaders to stop working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The petition specifically calls on leadership to withdraw any existing funding or engineering resources for the immigration and border control agencies, per Jennifer Elias of CNBC. The petition says, “In working with CBP, ICE, or ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement), Google would be trading its integrity for a bit of profit, and joining a shameful lineage.”