U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to expel asylum seekers as young as 8 months old from the southern border, Lomi Kriel reports for The Texas Tribune and ProPublica. “Between April and June, Customs and Border Protection officials encountered 3,379 unaccompanied minors at or between ports of entry. Of those, just 162 were sent to federal shelters for immigrant children run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Health and Human Services agency tasked with their care.” Kriel added that CBP “would not say whether the remaining minors had been expelled or explain what had happened to them,” but the government’s figures suggest they’ve been expelled from the country.

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, the Trump administration cracked down on legal protections for children by granting federal agents “sweeping powers to almost immediately return anyone at the border.” Now, most unaccompanied children who reach the U.S. “are quickly flown back to their home countries — often to danger,” Kriel continues. “Some children told advocates that they were sent to Mexico, even if they were not from there, in the middle of the night.”

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

BLOCKED – A federal appeals court yesterday blocked the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule from taking effect in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, reports Zolan Kanno-Youngs for The New York Times. The rule, introduced by the administration last year, greatly expanded the list of government benefits that could impact an immigrant’s application for a green card or other status change if they had previously accessed those programs. “Immigration groups have argued that the rule, even before it took effect, had discouraged immigrants in the country legally from seeking medical treatment or financial support,” Kanno-Youngs reports — a trend that is especially detrimental to the health of immigrants and their fellow community members in the midst of a global pandemic.

STATELESS – Members of the organization United Stateless are sharing their own experiences in response to the new Cate Blanchett-created Netflix series “Stateless,” arguing that the series, which highlights the inhumane treatment of displaced people by Australian authorities, missed a critical opportunity to tell the full story around a largely underreported and unknown issue. “The series never once mentions statelessness except in its title. It does next to nothing to clarify the term’s definition,” writes Ekaterina E., a founding member of United Stateless, for Medium. “In fact, it further deepens the false and confusing notion that statelessness is some obscure subset of the refugee or a displaced person’s stats. Statelessness is, in fact, a unique experience with profound implications, and it demands interrogation of this series’ misuse of the term.” Fellow founding United Stateless member Nikolai Levasov concludes, however, that audiences ought to watch the series and further familiarize themselves with the issue: “Find an immigration detention center in your state. Reach out to an organization that manages visitations. Find a stateless detainee and hear their story. See it through your own eyes.”

STRONG SUPPORT – A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that public support for immigration, in general, remains strong — however, most Americans support measures to restrict immigration if they are clearly designed to slow the spread of coronavirus. “Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric during the pandemic has done little to budge public opinion on other immigration policies,” Joel Rose writes for NPR. “Most of Trump’s policies, including his border wall, remain unpopular except among Republicans.” Jo Lee of Houston told NPR that she understood the need to stop the virus, but suggested she didn’t want Trump’s new restrictions — dozens of which the administration has issued since the start of the pandemic — to remain in effect. “Once this calms down, if somebody really wants to come here and raise their family and be a citizen, let them do that,” she said. Meanwhile, more Americans support federal stimulus checks for undocumented immigrants who pay U.S. taxes than oppose them, according to the poll: 49% of respondents said the government should provide the checks; 43% disagreed.

WORK PERMITS – A federal judge in Ohio has ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to print work permit cards for foreign citizens approved to work in the country within seven days, reports Dave Simpson for Law360. “U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley said that just because no statute dictates exactly when the USCIS should provide an employment authorization permit does not mean the agency can take as long as it wants. She pointed to harms caused by the lack of income available for named plaintiffs, some of whom are stuck in homeless shelters, unable to work and vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus.” According to the lawsuit filed, USCIS currently has a backlog of at least 75,000 unprinted employment authorization documents, leaving visa-holders unable to prove to employers that they are legally allowed to work in the U.S.

Thanks for reading,

Ali