Approximately 34 minutes before the midnight deadline, the Trump administration set next fiscal year’s refugee cap at a record low 15,000, down from last year’s 18,000, report Julie Watson and Matthew Lee for the Associated Press. And the timing couldn’t be worse for the world’s refugees.

As Chris Palusky of Bethany Christian Services writes in The Christian Post, “the pandemic has exacerbated the global refugee crisis and has disproportionately affected children, who account for 40% of displaced people around the world. This year, resilient refugees have faced not just a pandemic but also poor living conditions, travel bans, and more profound economic uncertainty.”

Meanwhile, Michelle Hackman at The Wall Street Journal reports that the record low cap coincides with a backlog of 120,000 refugees “who have been vetted but are waiting, sometimes years, for a place in line.” The Trump administration’s latest reduction comes as “the number of [people] fleeing violence and persecution around the world has swelled to 71 million people.”

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].

ABOUT THOSE TAXES – Over the last few years, there have been multiple stories about undocumented immigrants employed by the Trump family. Some of them have been placed in deportation proceedings as a result of their coming forward. Chris Sommerfeldt at the New York Daily News obtained tax records from four undocumented workers who worked for the Trump Organization, “showing that they paid tens of thousands of dollars in federal income taxes while working for the president — despite their immigration status.” Jesus Lira, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who used to work at Trump’s Westchester County golf club, paid more than $5,000 in federal income tax in 2017, compared to his former employer’s $750: “It’s just not right. It’s insane.”

BROKEN PROMISE – Iraqi interpreters who have worked with the American military are promised special help in immigrating to the U.S. with their families under the Direct Access Program — but of the 4,000 refugee spots set aside for these interpreters by the Trump administration last year, only 123 have been filled, Austin Landis reports for Newsy. “Their wait time is not months or years. If you're an Iraqi who applies to this program today, your wait time is really in centuries,” said Adam Bates, policy counsel at International Refugee Assistance Project. The State Department claims “the pandemic has created logistical challenges to international travel and overseas refugee interviews.”

COUNTING – The Trump administration is taking their efforts to undermine the census count — and the conservative towns and cities who depend on a full count — to the Supreme Court. Adam Liptak reports for The New York Times that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case as early as December on “efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the calculations used to apportion congressional seats.” Trump has ordered two versions of a census count — one including undocumented immigrants and the other excluding them. It is not clear how the second set would be derived, since “the Supreme Court last year rejected his efforts to add a question on citizenship to the census.” Back in 2018, we cited a George Washington Institute of Public Policy study that estimated funding for each state if there had been an additional 1% undercount in the 2010 census. Their findings? “Nine of the ten states with the highest projected losses [in federal funding] were 2016 Trump states.” Keep in mind that of the 10 states with the greatest percentage increases in immigrant population from 2010 to 2016, eight went for Trump in the 2016 election.

DOUBLE THE DEATHS – Immigrant deaths in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody doubled in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019, making it the highest annual total since 2005, Catherine E. Shoichet reports for CNN.  More than a third of the 21 detainees that died tested positive for COVID-19. Noting the poor health conditions in detention centers, Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, said that such a deadly system shouldn’t exist: “People should be with their loved ones, with their families, being able to social distance and quarantine at home going through their immigration proceedings. They shouldn’t be locked up."

VOTE OF CONSCIENCE – This week’s episode of our Vote of Conscience series for “Only in America,” features Adamou Mohamed, an organizer and civic engagement coordinator with Church World Service. He leads their efforts working with refugee leaders on voter registration, education, and turnout. We spoke about the unique experiences and challenges refugee voters face, and the importance of building engagement across communities. Be sure to tune in as we focus on civic engagement in the weeks leading up to the election — and please take a moment to fill out our listener survey. 

Thanks for reading,

Ali