At multiple ports of entry along the southern border, U.S. officials told asylum seekers they did not have space for them — regardless of whether they actually did — according to a previously unpublished report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General obtained by Adolfo Flores at BuzzFeed News. The practice began in 2018 after former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen instructed all ports of entry to implement “metering,” or queue management, in order to turn away up to 650 asylum seekers per day.

“At two ports of entry, [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] left holding cells empty despite a line of immigrants and asylum-seekers waiting in line to be processed,” Flores reports. After the implementation of the Trump administration’s family separation policy, the report finds, Nielsen “urged immigrants to enter the U.S. at a port of entry versus crossing illegally” – even while directing those same ports to turn people away.  

Welcome to Friday’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].

CONSEQUENCES – A 551-page report from the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee released yesterday details the traumatic consequences of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy, Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN. “Despite full knowledge that hundreds of children would likely be lost to their families forever, the Administration chose to expand the pilot program into a permanent nationwide policy,” the report concludes.

CLOSING MESSAGES – Meanwhile, in a new campaign ad, Joe Biden pledged to issue an executive order on his first day in office creating a federal task force dedicated to reuniting migrant children separated by the Trump administration policy, CNN’s Arlette Saenz reports. The ad is airing across battleground states including Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. As for President Trump’s second term immigration agenda, adviser Stephen Miller outlined four major priorities for NBC News’ Sahil Kapur: “limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities, expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas.”

RACE AGAINST TIME – More than 400,000 immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean are set to lose their protections on January 4, when the Trump administration plans to begin phasing out the program. With the exception of Syrian and Salvadoran TPS holders, whose protections have been extended, the administration alleges that conditions in the migrants’ home countries have improved. For those immigrants, it’s unclear what will happen come January: “It would be devastating for my whole family,” Marco Antonio Arita, a Honduran TPS recipient who has lived in the U.S. more than 20 years and whose two children were born here, told Juan Carlos Chavez at the Tampa Bay Times. “I have children, I have a wife, and they depend on my job. None of this makes sense.” As Andrew Atkins writes for the Naples Daily News, the path to permanent residency and then citizenship for TPS holders “grows longer and more obscure,” and anxieties persist: “My biggest concern, now, is my family, my kids. Especially my 13-years-old daughter,” Rony Ponthieux, a TPS holder from Haiti who has lived in the U.S. since 1999. “She’s never been in Haiti. I will be forced to go with her to a country she never knew.” 

REMOVAL – There’s growing concern that the Trump administration could be contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in Haiti by increasing the number of deportation flights to the country in October, Julian Borger reports for The Guardian. “Some of the Haitians deported in recent weeks have been asylum seekers who had been taken from detention centres [sic] in what administration critics say is a rush to expel Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean ahead of the election. … many of whom were flown out while they had legal cases pending.” Haitians “have been deported under Title 42, a previously obscure clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law which has been used by the Trump administration since March this year to expel more than 200,000 migrants,” Borger writes. The number of flights to Haiti increased from one or two per month to 12 in October alone, returning immigrants to the political and gang violence they fled — and potentially sending COVID-19 along with them.

LOOPHOLE – In preparation for deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have coerced at least two dozen Cuban immigrants — “sometimes through physical violence” — in detention centers in Louisiana and Georgia to sign a form saying they would like to return to Cuba to visit family, Monique O. Madan at The Miami Herald reports. The form was previously used by those hoping to visit Cuba legally under embargo. “The detainees, 26 in all, told the Herald that if they declined to sign the travel documents, agents handcuffed them, pushed them against a table and forcibly scanned their fingerprints to get a digital signature.” While Cuba is not currently admitting deportees due to the pandemic, experts believe ICE may have found a loophole, pushing “for the forms to be signed en masse to prepare for the next available deportation flight.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali