As President-elect Biden forges ahead with transition planning for his administration, Nicole Narea at Vox breaks down the top candidates rumored to be under consideration to head up the Department of Homeland Security.

The list includes Alejandro Mayorkas, former deputy secretary at DHS under President Obama, who is "best known as the architect of [DACA];" California Attorney General Xavier Becerra; Rep. Val Demings (D-Florida); and Lisa Monaco, former Homeland Security adviser for President Obama.

"One has to take really seriously what a significant portfolio this is and what a major management job it is to run an agency of that size and scope … The people managing DHS really do have to come prepared and hit the ground running in terms of their knowledge of what’s going on in the agency and how you start to turn this ship," said Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under President Clinton.

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].

LAST-MINUTE PUSH – As it wraps up its final weeks in office, the Trump administration is reportedly rushing though "last-minute immigration limits" including controversial agreements to send asylum seekers to Central American countries, Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN. "It's common for administrations to try to get pending items across the finish line before a transfer of power, but such moves have the potential of setting up more hurdles for Biden, who's pledged to roll back Trump immigration policies, many of which have occurred through regulations that can be more arduous to reverse."

‘SHARED FUTURE’ – In the aftermath of a highly divisive election, the country needs to come together with a new understanding of who we are as a nation, write the Aspen Institute’s Ashley Quarcoo and Caroline Hopper in an op-ed for USA Today. They call on Americans to "rediscover the story of immigrants in this country, who have come here from every continent seeking the promise of a better life, and whose contributions to this country are another critical part of our nation’s identity." The pair is also conducting a new research project, Who Is Us, which "will explore how Americans from a multitude of backgrounds grapple with the question of what it means to be American today, and ultimately how this impacts the way American democracy functions." We discussed the new American identity at Leading the Way on Tuesday with the likes of International Resuce Committee CEO David Milliband, Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Bárcena Coqui and the Trinity Forum’s Cherie Harder — for those who missed it, recordings of all conversations are now available.

TALKING TO KIDS – Allie Mondell, an advocacy organizer for Choose Welcome, writes in an opinion piece for The Winston-Salem Chronicle that a recent question from her young son regarding immigrants and the border wall reminded her to be "intentional" about discussing the topic with her kids. She broke it down to the basics: "Immigrants are kids just like him who have moms and dads who love them, friends they like to play with, and special teddy bears they hold tight at night. ... We’ve talked about what it would feel like to leave our home and have to start somewhere new." These difficult conversations are necessary, she writes. "Every day our children are learning to forget that immigrants are no different than they are. As parents, we can and we should help them to unlearn these errors."

IMAGINE IF – The immigrants responsible for the groundbreaking COVID-19 vaccines currently in the news could have been denied entry to the U.S. if subjected to President Trump’s tightening restrictions on legal migration and skilled professionals in particular, Andres Oppenheimer writes in his Miami Herald column. "Moderna, the first company to announce a near 95 percent success rate with its COVID-19 vaccine, was founded by Lebanese-born Noubar Afeyan, who came to the United States to get his Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... The company’s CEO is Stephane Bancel, a native of France who came to the United States to do graduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota." As our friends at New American Economy point out, immigrants have proved to be essential in just about every field during the pandemic — including pharmaceutical manufacturing, where "[t]he more than 132,000 immigrants working in the industry made up a quarter of the total workforce in 2018."

‘PATTERN OF OBSTRUCTION’ – Senior members of several congressional committees wrote to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week, calling for them to halt the deportations of immigrant detainees involved in pending allegations into medical misconduct at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, reports Riley Bunch in The Valdosta Daily Times. "Deporting women who maybe key witnesses in these proceedings would be an obstruction of justice and an abuse of authority," the letter reads, noting that the actions "fit a pattern of obstruction by ICE." The agency has already deported six detainees who alleged they were subject to non-consensual gynecological procedures by Dr. Mahendra Amin at the Georgia detention center.

Thanks for reading,

Ali