In his one-bedroom house in Tijuana, Mexico, Hector watched Telemundo to catch up on reports about the U.S. presidential election. He knew the results would shape his family’s future. For the last 11 months, the father of five from Guatemala has been separated from his wife, Alicia, and three of their children.

They came to San Diego last year to seek asylum. To their surprise, they were sent back to Tijuana. Before Donald Trump became president, they would’ve spent their time waiting for their immigration court hearing living in the United States. But instead, under the administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, asylum seekers are waiting for their court dates in Mexico. 

For a few months, the family remained together in Tijuana.

But because the family tried entering the U.S. on two separate trips – Alicia and three of their children first, followed by Hector and two sons the next day, after they could scrounge up more money for the trip – the Department of Homeland Security split them up into separate immigration cases. So when Alicia went to her court hearing in San Diego in January, the government released her and her two teenage children into the U.S. Their 20-year-old daughter, for reasons the family and their lawyers still don’t understand, was sent to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. Hector remains in Tijuana with two sons, still awaiting his hearing.

“In this moment, where we are now, we don’t want to look back, only forward,” Hector told me. “I'm praying to God for a good future.”

Since I last spoke to Hector, the results of the election have rolled in and we now know that Democrat Joe Biden won the election. Biden has pledged to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy, but it remains to see exactly how that plays out for people like Hector, whose story we told as part of our latest Reveal episode. With help from my colleague Patrick Michels, we examined all the ways Trump has dismantled protections for asylum-seeking families like Hector and Alicia’s.

Those changes came rapidly, one after another. In 2017, border agents limited the number of people who could enter each day at ports of entry, a practice called “metering,” leaving asylum seekers stranded in Mexico as they waited for weeks or months to enter. In 2018, the government separated thousands of children from their parents in an effort to deter migrants from seeking refuge here. And then there’s the “Remain in Mexico” policy, launched in early 2019, which has forced about 60,000 migrants to remain outside the U.S. while their asylum claims are pending. 

Biden has pledged to reverse Trump’s web of anti-immigrant policies. And the work ahead has become more clear in recent days. The president-elect plans to completely overhaul the Department of Homeland Security, placing the agency’s focus on cybersecurity and disaster response instead of its current mandate to crack down on immigration. This past weekend, Biden pledged to increase the cap for refugee admissions to 125,000, after Trump significantly lowered the Obama-era cap of 110,000 to just 15,000. Biden also plans on fully restoring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that has shielded more than 650,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.

With all this work ahead of the upcoming administration, many immigrant families like Hector’s may not see changes to their circumstances immediately.

“I don't even know where to begin,” said Arléne Amarante, an immigration attorney representing Alicia. “It would still require the new government quite a bit of work to undo all the harm that has been done over the last four years.”

Listen to Hector’s story in our latest Reveal episode, “United, we’re not.”

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.

ICE DETAINEES AT GREATER RISK OF COVID-19 THAN REST OF COUNTRY

Immigrants held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention are 13 times more likely to contract COVID-19 than the general U.S. population, according to a study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital analyzed COVID-19 case data between April and August for 92 ICE detention facilities. 

“Despite ICE’s mitigation efforts, COVID-19 case rates among detainees increased every month from April to August,” the study reads. “A consistently higher monthly case rate and test positivity rate among detainees suggest that COVID-19 is escalating more rapidly inside detention centers compared with the U.S. population.”

Since the start of the pandemic, ICE has decreased its detained population, and it scaled back arrests in the spring (though arrests have now resumed). But as our reporting showed this year, ICE was slow to distribute masks at detention centers, lagged behind on COVID-19 testing, continued transferring detainees and was reluctant to accept testing assistance from state health officials. Department of Homeland Security officials have also acknowledged that transfers spread the coronavirus.

Health experts had warned that the conditions inside detention facilities, coupled with the inability of detainees to socially distance, were bound to supercharge the virus’s spread. 

As of this week, more than 7,300 detainees have tested positive since March, including more than 400 active cases, according to ICE’s data. Eight detainees have died from the virus. 

Study authors told USA Today that the COVID-19 spread in ICE detention may be worse than their analysis indicates: “Lack of data transparency, minimal testing and anecdotal reports of inconsistent compliance with health guidelines suggest case numbers could be much higher.” As we reported in September, ICE’s COVID-19 website has serious limitations. It doesn’t track how case totals change over time and doesn’t report how many people are being tested at individual facilities.

“We have an incomplete picture of what’s happening with testing,” study author and Harvard Medical School student Parsa Erfani told USA Today.

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. Many undocumented immigrants are turning to street vending to make ends meet in the pandemic. (The New York Times)

Thousands of undocumented immigrants living in Queens, New York, have lost their jobs and are ineligible for financial assistance, forcing many to find a new means to survive. Because the city caps street vendor permits at 2,900, a black market of “ambulantes,” or street vendors, has emerged. “Ambulantes are frustrated and feel that a respected way of making a living in other parts of the world is criminalized here.”

The kicker: Like the veteran ambulante that she is, Sabina Morales cast a stoic, no-nonsense look on Roosevelt Avenue. To her side, a refrigerator truck – where she stores her produce – idled. She has been selling produce in Jackson Heights since she came to New York 15 years ago. And since the pandemic began, she has helped others, like Cristina Sanchez, to set up their own stands. The influx of new vendors, however, has made her work more difficult. “Before the pandemic, business was so much better,” said Sabina, who came to the city to reunite her 5-year-old grandson with his mother. “Now there are more sellers than customers.”

2. Churches closed during the pandemic are opening their doors to immigrants recently released from detention. (Los Angeles Times)

Houses of worship remain empty as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on across the country. But some churches are providing temporary refuge to immigrants released from ICE custody. 

The kicker: Lead pastor the Rev. Ivan Sevillano said he understands intimately the plight of immigrants: He lived for 10 years without legal status after overstaying his visa from Peru. Heritage, a historically Black church dating to the 1880s, has long served the surrounding homeless community, offering people Sunday breakfast, showers and the ability to park in the church lot. Its 15-member leadership board voted last summer to begin taking in immigrants released from detention centers. “Though we don’t open for services, always throughout the week, we are doing something for someone,” Sevillano said. “Many of us Christians preach but don’t act. The important thing is also to act because there are people out there that need help.”

3. Migrant smugglers are profiting from the Trump administration’s decision to shut down the border during the pandemic. (Reuters)

In March, the U.S. government closed the border and began expelling immigrants seeking asylum here under Title 42 of the U.S. Code, which bans immigration if there is a "serious danger of the introduction of … disease into the United States." But that decision is having unintended consequences. Smugglers are taking advantage of the border shutdown because migrants aren’t being deported back to their home countries. Instead, the U.S. is returning them to the border, leading to an increase in repeated crossing attempts, often organized by smugglers.

The kicker: These days, Martin Salgado’s migrant shelter in the city of San Luis Rio Colorado on Mexico’s border with the United States feels more like an hourly hotel. His guests, many of them from Central America, often don't even bother to spend the night. Salgado said he has never seen people cycle through as repeatedly as he has in recent months, after the United States began expelling almost all migrants caught on the Mexican border rather than returning them to their homelands. Now, human smugglers often attempt to get migrants back across the border the very same day they are deported, he said. Previously, Central American migrants apprehended at the border would be processed in the U.S. immigration system and would often be held for weeks, if not months, before being deported back to their home country. "We never saw this before," said Salgado, who runs the shelter near Arizona's western limits founded by his mother in the 1990s. Some Central Americans who arrive at the shelter after being deported “eat, bathe and suddenly they disappear." 
 

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– Laura C. Morel