In response to the Trump administration’s move to strip international students of their visas if they are unable to attend in-person classes in the fall, Harvard and MIT filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, reports Daniella Silva for NBC News. The lawsuit describes a higher education system left in chaos, forced to make the impossible choice between opening campus and threatening the health of students, faculty and staff or effectively abandoning their international students. Forcing students to return to their home countries for online classes is “impossible, impracticable, prohibitively expensive, and/or dangerous,” according to the lawsuit. Faculty members are expressing support for their international students: “Every single [faculty member spoken to] volunteered to offer an in-person, one-on-one tutorial to our international students so that they can continue with in-person learning and avoid deportation,” Yale Law School Dean Heather K. Gerken wrote in a letter to the community. “One of my colleagues told me that he would teach outside in the snow if he needed to.”

Meanwhile, Dan Samorodnitsky at MassiveScience details the story of M., an immigrant and researcher who feels powerless under ICE’s new guidelines: “Everyone is telling me to stop being pessimistic but I’m being realistic. I contribute so much to this society and now I have a fear of ICE. … I’ve been a scientist and published in all the right journals and it means nothing right now.”

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

TESTING POSITIVE – Close to half of the 300 CoreCivic employees contracted to run the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona have tested positive for COVID-19, resulting in a shortage of staff to monitor cells and leaving many of the migrant detainees neglected, Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff at NBC News report. “We sometimes can't let them out to use the phone due to a lack of employees,” said one employee. “It’s overwhelming, not just for the detainees, but for the staff, as well. We can see it in their faces.” It’s not just detention centers where outbreaks are hitting hard: Suzanne Gamboa at NBC News points to new CDC data revealing that Latino workers account for 56% of reported coronavirus cases at meat and chicken processing plants.

“INDISPENSABLE” – The Trump administration should heed evangelicals’ calls for a permanent legislative solution for Dreamers, write Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Shirley V. Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, in an op-ed for The xxxxxx. Amid reports that the president is planning to file new paperwork to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Kim and Hoogstra point out that an overwhelming majority of evangelicals – 76% – want Dreamers to be allowed to stay lawfully in the country. “DACA is not primarily a political issue for evangelical Christians: Dreamers are us. There are estimated hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients that are faithful members of evangelical denominations that comprise the National Association of Evangelicals,” they write. “They contribute richly to churches and academic communities, and are indispensable to the educational communities they study in.”

“TRAGIC TRUTH” – Angeline, a 24-year-old pregnant migrant, fled violence in her home country of Honduras and sought medical attention in the U.S., only to be turned away by U.S. Border Patrol due to the Trump administration’s policies making it nearly impossible for migrants to seek refuge. As I told Lauren Villagran for the El Paso Times, “An employee of the federal government walks a pregnant woman who is fleeing violence in Honduras and abandons her at the top of a bridge to go into one of the violent cities in the world … That is the most tragic truth of our system at this point.” It’s safe to say that when these executive orders have no definitive end date — and when the administration has such a track record on efforts to slash legal immigration — President Trump is clearly using the pandemic to shut down immigration. ICYMI: We have a running list of the administration’s immigration changes during COVID-19.

#AllOfUSDubuque – Our friends in Dubuque, Iowa, led by the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, have joined the #AllOfUs campaign with #AllOfUsDubuque as they lift up the contributions of community members, including immigrants, who are doing the essential and transformative work to keep their neighbors healthy and safe during the pandemic. Nancy Van Milligen, the foundation’s president, says it best in an op-ed for the Dubuque Telegraph Herald: “The coronavirus doesn’t care about our differences — it doesn’t discriminate against who it infects. At the same time, we know that certain populations are disproportionately impacted due to circumstances that increase risk. Communities of color, seniors and immigrants have been the most adversely affected. That’s why it’s important to bridge what separates us and work together as one Dubuque to help one another through this unprecedented time.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali