Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced plans yesterday to siphon $3.6 billion from 127 military projects, including upgrades to military bases here and abroad, in order to build the President’s border wall, report Jennifer Scholtes, Sarah Ferris and Jacqueline Feldscher in Politico.

This budget raid is just the latest product of the “national emergency” that President Trump announced back in February in order to divert $8 billion from federal agencies to build 175 miles of border wall. While this policy might help fulfill a campaign promise, Americans who had jobs because of these military construction contracts are out of luck, a border wall does nothing to address our nation's immigration challenges and we are no safer.

This is just bad policy.

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes.

Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

“CAN I PLEASE HAVE MY WIFE?” – When Edgardo Bartolome, a custodian for the Moody Bible Institute and a 2016 Trump voter, lost his first wife to cancer, Julita Rafael helped pick up the pieces. After they married in 2002, Edgardo – a U.S. citizen – filed a family petition to allow Julita to apply for legal status, but Julita’s case was denied due to an outstanding removal order that she was unaware of. After refiling the petition, Julita was arrested at a standard immigration interview and ordered deported to the Philippines despite having no criminal history, reports Esther Yoon-Ji Kang in WBEZ. At their last meeting before her deportation, “[m]ore than once, Edgardo stepped out of the visitation room and walked over to the guard to plead, through tears, ‘Can I please have my wife?’”
CHAOS, CONFUSION AND CONTRADICTION – At the San Diego Immigration Court, migrants, judges and lawyers are finding the Migrant Protection Protocols (also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy) to be contradictory. The policy leaves asylum seekers without legal representation or a home address, having been moved to Mexico under the very policy claiming to make applications more orderly, writes Sophia Lee at World Magazine. “The idea is that if we make this an extremely miserable process for people, we’ll stop getting the number of individuals coming. That’s not taking into account the reality of the circumstances these people are fleeing,” said Margaret Cargioli of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. This firsthand account clearly captures the chaos and confusion at the border.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT – As the Trump administration considers further reductions to the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. annually, 27 retired senior military leaders have written to the president, arguing that the refugee program is a critical national security interest, Alicia A. Caldwell reports for The Wall Street Journal. “In conjunction with U.S. foreign aid, refugee resettlement offers a concrete support to our allies and frontline nations hosting more than their fair share of refugees. Providing safe haven to the most vulnerable … demonstrates America’s humanitarian leadership and supports regional stability...” The full letter and list of signatories can be found here.

OPTING OUT – When the “public charge” rule was first released in 2018, Jazmin Cerda, a public benefits specialist at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council in Chicago, decided to opt out of benefits for her and her daughter, Leila Miller reports for the Los Angeles Times. When her daughter needed surgery, Cerda thought she faced an impossible choice: “It was the benefits for my daughter or my citizenship.” However, a lawyer later told her that the service would not impact her eligibility for citizenship, and Cerda now tries to connect immigrants to legal assistance as they navigate the new rule. “This is precisely the sort of effect I believe this rule change is intended to have, to confuse and dissuade eligible candidates from applying for residency or even citizenship,” said Miriam Nunez, a supervising attorney at the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles.

SHOWING UP – While the Trump administration has justified its intention to overturn the Flores Settlement Agreement by claiming that such a move is necessary to prevent migrant families from disappearing and missing their court dates, that hasn’t been the case in Utah, Lee Davidson reports for The Salt Lake Tribune. According to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), in Utah cases opened since 2016, 83.5% of immigrants who were once detained appeared at all their immigration court hearings, while those who were never detained appeared at 86.2%. “The vast, vast majority here are showing up. In fact, I’m surprised when somebody fails to appear,” said immigration attorney Mark Alvarez.

Thanks for reading,

Ali