While President-elect Joe Biden has promised to recommit the U.S. to a robust refugee resettlement program, Deborah Amos at NPR breaks down the complicated challenges he’ll face in reversing the Trump administration’s severe refugee cuts. Not only is there already a backlog of more than 120,000 refugees already in line to come to the U.S., but the program’s infrastructure has also been decimated by funding cuts, meaning a Biden administration will need to work with a potentially GOP-controlled Senate to actually fund higher levels of refugee resettlement.

Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute provides a sobering reality check: "For the first 100 days, there will be very little bandwidth for a Biden administration to deal with anything other than COVID. We have never faced a crisis like this before … We can't expect a huge leap on immigration policy. If people expect that this is going to happen tomorrow, they will be in for a big disappointment."

We’ll be discussing this and what else to expect in the years ahead next week as we bring together dozens of influential speakers from a variety of backgrounds for our annual Leading the Way convening. Join us from 3-5 p.m. ET from Nov. 16-19 for conversations on the post-election path forward, American identity amid polarization, the new economics of immigration and more. Registration is free!

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].

DEPORTATION DEFENSE – Commissioners in Harris County, Texas, voted Tuesday to approve the allocation of more than $2 million in funding for a program to help immigrants facing deportation pay legal fees, Elizabeth Trovall reports for Houston Public Media. As Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative legal director Andrea Guttin notes: "In the Houston area, there are four detention centers that have a capacity to house over 4,000 people on any given day. An estimated 69% of them have not had a lawyer at any point in their proceeding." ProPublica’s Lomi Kriel points out on Twitter that Harris County was the largest metro area in the country without a deportation defense fund. This move is a perfect example of what local governments
can do on federal issues — a topic Lomi will be discussing with El Paso Mayor Dee Margo and Mayor Marvin Rees of Bristol, England, during Leading the Way next week. 

‘I NEEDED TO SERVE’ – As we continue to honor our veterans this week, Sgt. Jessica Duvernay in Task & Purpose tells the story of Pvt. 1st Class Yasir Kadhum, an interpreter for the U.S. Army in Iraq who eventually became "a target of the enemy and had to start concealing his identity whenever traveling outside of his job." Fearing for his safety, Kadhum and his family immigrated to the U.S. on Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), and he became a citizen this past July in a ceremony with fellow soldiers. "If my son wants to go to the playground, I'm not scared someone will kidnap him. I'm not scared someone will be threatening me through him," said Kadhum. "I came here and the first thing I thought was I needed to serve; because this Army has worked to help people to do better in their life."

‘13 TIMES MORE LIKELY’ – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees are more than 13 times more likely to contract COVID-19 than the general population, according to an October report from the Journal of the American Medical Association. The report makes it clear that ICE is failing to prevent the spread of the virus in its facilities, Adrianna Rodriguez reports for USA Today: "For the study, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital researchers calculated monthly tests and case rates per 100,000 people using the average monthly population of detainees in detention facilities" — but a lack of data transparency from ICE, minimal testing and reports of inconsistent compliance with health guidelines
make experts believe that the numbers could be even higher than the study suggests. Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said that "[u]nless we’re wanting to give people who are detained by ICE death sentences ... we should absolutely be doing everything we can to protect them. Not providing means to stop the spread in those locations is a national travesty. It’s a stain on our country."

THE PATH FORWARD – For our special post-election episode of "Only in America," I talked to Robert P. Jones, CEO and Founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, about the future of American identity, interpreting recent polling trends, and what the numbers reveal about how we can heal and build a path forward. After the election, one thing remains clear: We need to reimagine American immigration policy to make sure it reflects our cultural values. Listen to the episode here, and don’t forget you can hear more from Robert next week during Leading the Way.

Thanks for reading,

Ali