In case there was any lingering doubt over whether the Trump administration will try once again to terminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) after the Supreme Court last week blocked the administration’s initial attempt to end it, the president confirmed yesterday he will do just that. Anita Kumar reports for Politico that Trump said he will “resubmit” paperwork to end the program. When asked if he had a message for the Dreamers, he said, “Put your chin up good things are going to happen.”

In our special post-DACA decision note from last week, we highlighted a range of Republican senators who are calling for a permanent legislative solution for Dreamers. With the administration’s proclamation to suspend certain types of legal immigration (good Washington Post explainer here) and Congress back in town this week, it’ll be interesting to see if anything surfaces.

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

BORDER WALL VISIT – During a visit to the Arizona border yesterday, President Trump boasted about the progress of his “big, beautiful wall” and doubled down on campaign promises to continue his immigration crackdown, report Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs for The New York Times. The president spent at least half an hour eliciting praise from officials, including acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan, who praised “220 new miles of wall system that gives us an enhanced capability that we never had.” Some perspective: The Times reports that “all but three of the 216 miles of border wall constructed by the Trump administration are essentially much larger replacements of existing, dilapidated fences or vehicle barriers.”

FARMWORKERS – One class of immigrant worker that President Trump did not target in his extended and expanded proclamation? Farmworkers. Julie Weise, a historian at the University of Oregon, lays out a detailed history of our relationship with immigrant farmworkers — and all the contradictions that come with it — in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “Immigrants are not and have never been the only people willing to do agricultural work — but they have become the primary group of people willing to do it with the wages and conditions that U.S. farmers have offered. In turn, they are the only ones who can keep our grocery bills as low as we now expect them to be. That’s why in good economic times and bad, welcoming times and anti-immigrant times, farmers whatever their politics have done what it takes to keep the immigrant faucet open.”

REFUGEE HURDLES – The need to assist refugees living in the U.S. is more important than ever as many face social and economic hurdles compounded by a pandemic, writes Dona Abbott of Bethany Christian Services in an op-ed for The Detroit News. “As we continue to battle the spread of COVID-19, we’re confronting injustice, inequality, racism and pent-up anger stemming from broken systems that have never been fixed,” Abbott writes. “Resettled refugees — new Americans from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who have fled violence and persecution — are among those deeply impacted by the virus, job loss and racism in our country.” Abbott goes on to add that previous presidents have shown how the country can welcome refugees humanely and with proper support — a precedent that has been upended by the current administration, which has “stopped the resettlement of all refugees when the need is greater than ever.”

STATELESS – Born in a land that no longer exists and living in a country where citizenship is elusive, stateless people need permanent citizenship solutions to remain in the U.S., writes Karina Gareginovna Ambartsoumian-Clough, a founding member of the organization United Stateless and a DACA recipient under final removal proceedings, in an essay for WHYY. “The DACA program is not secured from future attempts to rescind it and without protections in place in the form of established law, the Department of Homeland Security can easily target DACA recipients for removal,” she writes. “As stateless people on DACA, we are vulnerable to losing access to identification and being subjected to prolonged detention because we typically do not have access to travel documentation.” Congressional advocates have been unable to get a vote on the Refugee Protection Act of 2013, which would allow for certain stateless people to apply for legal status.

BAILOUT – An airline company that the Trump administration uses for deportations received a $67 million bailout as part of the federal government’s coronavirus relief package, reports Alexander Nazaryan for Yahoo News: “In addition, Omni Air has charged the federal government exorbitant prices for ‘high risk’ deportation flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement … The expense was related to the unwillingness of airlines other than Omni Air to conduct such flights.” The bailout funds were in addition to the company’s $77.65 million Department of Defense contract.

DELAYED – Earlier this spring, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) notified staff of potential furloughs beginning in July. Yesterday, Marisa Schultz at Fox News reports the agency “[d]elayed the expected furloughs of more than 13,000 employees by at least two weeks as the federal agency seeks to secure $1.2 billion from Congress to stay afloat after the global coronavirus pandemic has dried up immigration revenue.” Nicole Narea wrote an explainer for Vox in May that explains why USCIS — which relies on fees rather than taxpayer dollars — is facing a shortfall.

Thanks for reading,

Ali