The Trump administration has until tomorrow to release immigrant children in the nation’s three family detention centers in compliance with a federal judge’s order that found conditions in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention put children’s health at risk. Yet officials “aren’t expected to allow their parents to leave with them,” writes Jazmine Ulloa for the Boston Globe. “Parents must decide: abandon their asylum claims and face imminent deportation with their children to countries where their lives are in danger or allow their children to be released to a sponsor or relative here and risk separation if the parents are later deported.” As my colleague at the Forum Laurence Benenson recently wrote in an op-ed with Jonathan Haggerty of the R Street Institute for Newsweek, there is a better way. The administration should consider alternatives to detention, which are effective, far less costly, and far more humane: “Given the health risks to children, releasing families with alternatives is the moral choice.”

Meanwhile, following the deaths of several migrant children in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody beginning in 2018, the agency “hired more medical personnel at the border, enlisted help from the CDC to improve its procedures and developed more complete health guidelines,” reports Michelle Hackman at The Wall Street Journal. However, a report commissioned by Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey found that those improvements have been implemented inconsistently, leaving many children without proper medical care.

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

CALLING ON CONGRESS – Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve counted at least 48 immigration-related policy changes from the Trump administration — some temporary and necessary in response to the pandemic, others sweeping and radical like the attempted international student visa restrictions. These broad, indefinite changes to immigration policy — as well as the administration’s actions on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — “are issues that should be sitting squarely in front of Congress, not being decided by the judicial and executive branches of government,” writes Holly Kuzmich, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle. “Continuing to put off comprehensive immigration reform puts issues like DACA in the hands of the executive branch and only exacerbates the negative effects on our economy, our colleges and universities, and on immigrants themselves.”

OUT OF TIME – Employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are bracing for furloughs as the agency runs out of time to secure additional funding, reports Nicole Ogrysko for Federal News Network. Unless the struggling agency receives emergency funding from Congress, it will have to furlough about 13,400 workers without pay beginning August 3. If furloughs go into effect, the agency will not have the capacity to process as many immigration applications. “We are unsure how we’re going to continue our operations if the furlough goes through,” said Nicole Guess, an immigration service officer and president of American Federation for Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2660. “The law tells us that we must interview certain applicants, and we’re not sure how we’re going to continue that.”

CHILLING EFFECT – As we highlighted on Monday, a joint report from World Relief and Open Doors USA found that the number of Christian refugees allowed into the U.S. has dropped by 90% since 2015, and the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Jenna Browder writes that the steep decline could have a chilling effect beyond the U.S.: “Since the refugee resettlement program began 40 years ago, the US has never taken in this few refugees. And while advocates say no White House has been stronger on religious freedom than this one, United Nations data shows when the U.S. limits refugees, other countries follow its lead.”

COMPLETE DEVASTATION – A new report from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) examines the aftermath of several worksite ICE raids in Ohio, Texas, and Mississippi under the Trump administration with disturbing findings: “The impact of raids on families, communities, and children — many of whom are U.S. citizens — was the complete devastation of family economic security and mental and physical wellbeing.” Sam Allard reports for the Cleveland Scene that “[r]esearchers found that children of workers at the raided sites were separated from their parents for up to several months. In both the Ohio and Mississippi raids, some parents were held at prisons or detention facilities hours away from their homes and were unable to see their children for the duration of their detention.”

HOW WE GOT HERE – This week on “Only in America,” we take a look at what we can learn from our nation’s history of immigration reform that could help shape its future. Jia Lynn Yang, deputy national editor at The New York Times and author of “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965,” joins me to set the scene on what led to immigration restrictionism in the U.S. 100 years ago, the fight to change those laws, and how that has affected where we are today. If you think the conversation is interesting, wait until you read the book.

Thanks for reading,

Ali