Following a June ruling from Judge Dolly Gee in California ordering the release of children in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody amid COVID-19, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this week denied a blanket request to release families in ICE detention due to the same health risks, Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands report for CNN. The case before Judge Boasberg “called for the release of families, not just children. He didn’t agree with the plaintiffs request to release everyone.”

Meanwhile, ICE officials have until Monday, July 27 to comply with Judge Gee’s order to release children detained across three facilities to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and it’s possible that the administration will again separate families by releasing the children without allowing their parents to leave with them. As my colleague Laurence Benenson, the Forum’s assistant vice president of policy and advocacy, and Jonathan Haggerty, criminal justice fellow at the R Street Institute, previously wrote in an op-ed for Newsweek, the administration must urgently consider more humane alternatives to detention that allow families to stay together.

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

“A SHADOW SYSTEM” – The Trump administration is detaining immigrant children for weeks — some as young as one year old — in hotels on the Arizona- and Texas-Mexico borders before deporting them to their home countries, Nomaan Merchant reports for the Associated Press. “This appalling violation of basic child welfare standards runs counter to values that we hold dear in this nation and is a shameful use of taxpayer dollars that could otherwise be invested in programs that protect children on the move who are in danger of trafficking and other threats posed by criminal entities,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, in a statement. Leecia Welch, an attorney at the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law, told the Associated Press that the administration has “created a shadow system in which there’s no accountability for expelling very young children.” (Read that last sentence again out loud.)

UNSAFE – A federal judge in Canada has ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement — a 2004 pact that recognizes the U.S. and Canada as mutually safe places for refugees — is unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as sending claimants back to the U.S. could risk their life, liberty, and security, CTV News reports. The court “could hardly fail to be moved by the testimonies of the appalling experiences of people in the U.S. immigration detention system, after Canada closed the doors on them. … ‘Their experiences show us – and convinced the Court – that the U.S. cannot be considered a safe country for refugees,” said Dorota Blumczynska, president of the council for refugees. “While the Federal Court has provided the government with six months leeway, it is imperative that Canada immediately end the return of claimants to the U.S.,” said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada.

SHORTSIGHTED – The Trump administration’s repeated efforts to limit immigration in the name of “protecting” American jobs are shortsighted and detrimental to U.S. companies, writes Bilal Baloch, the co-founder and COO of GlobalWonks and a fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, in an op-ed for MarketWatch. Research has been “resolute” that society is strengthened by diversity, Bilal writes: “[P]ositive selection into the U.S. can strengthen democratic institutions abroad and build social, political, and cultural relations between the U.S. and reverse migrants’ home countries. Consequently, crucial geopolitical alliances, trade relationships, and international markets have been shaped by CEOs, diplomats, and investors who quite literally were made in America.”

IMMIGRATION NATION – Netflix has released the trailer for its upcoming docuseries, “Immigration Nation,” which takes viewers inside the migrant crisis at our southern border, Proma Khosla writes for Mashable. The six-part series, which “follows activists, lawmakers, attorneys, immigrants, and even ICE agents” over the course of three years, premieres on August 3. You can watch the trailer here.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? – This week on “Only in America,” we pick up where we left off in our latest series, “How did we get here?,” and delve into how the era following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 led to major immigration reform in the 1980s. Charles Kamasaki — senior cabinet adviser for UnidosUS, author of “Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die” and firsthand witness to the immigration debates of this time — told me about the hurdles we must overcome to create solutions, the politics of compromise, and how we can bring future reforms across the finish line.

Thanks for reading,

Ali