Yesterday, in compliance with a Friday court order from Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, the Trump administration said that it has fully restored Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which protects young immigrants across the country from deportation, Nomaan Merchant and Elliot Spagat report for the Associated Press. "The Department of Homeland Security [DHS] posted on its website that it is accepting new applications, petitions for two-year renewals and requests for permission to temporarily leave the U.S."

Since DHS said that it may still "‘seek relief from the order’, signaling that its concession to the court order may be short-lived if its legal efforts succeed," Michelle Celleri, an attorney with the advocacy group Alliance San Diego, is advising her clients to act quickly: "There’s just way too much happening right now … I don’t want people caught in the crossfire."

Welcome to Tuesday’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]. 

LASTING DAMAGE – Three years ago, Leticia Peren was separated from her 15-year-old son Yovany under the Trump administration’s "zero-tolerance" policy after being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. Although the pair were ultimately reunited, "the bonds broken during their 26 months apart — when Ms. Peren was a voice on the phone more than 1,500 miles away, as Yovany made new friends, went to a new school, learned to live without her — have been slow to regrow," Caitlin Dickerson reports for The New York Times. "Ms. Peren says she has come to understand that being reunited with her son did not restore the bonds they once shared. Instead, she said, they are different people in a new place, building a relationship that is, in some ways, just beginning." Caitlin, who is headed to The Atlantic, is this morning’s guest on The Daily — it’s a great listen.

READJUSTMENT – After four years of carrying out the Trump administration’s harsh agenda, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees are anticipating a distinct change in tone under President-elect Biden’s leadership come January. Hamed Aleaziz at BuzzFeed News interviewed 12 former and current ICE officials for their take on how Biden should overhaul the agency and its tattered reputation. As one former spokesperson for the organization, James Schwab, noted, being employed at ICE under Trump wasn’t about the work —  it was "about being anti-immigrant." Said another former ICE official who served under both Obama and Trump: "Law enforcement should be neutral, should be driven by policy and through fair and humane implementation of the law … Unfortunately, ICE put their MAGA hat on. They’re gonna try to take it off come January, but I don’t know how successful that will be."

ARREST RATES – Between 2012 and 2018, undocumented immigrants in Texas were less than half as likely to be arrested for violent crimes as U.S.-born  citizens, according to a University of Wisconsin–Madison study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Melinda Wenner Moyer notes in Scientific American that the study is one of the first to "link a specific immigration status to the rates for specific types of crimes." Charis E. Kubrin, professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, describes the study as "another nail in the coffin of what we know about the link between immigration and crime." Said, Michael Light, a sociologist who co-authored the study: "Simply put, we found that undocumented immigrants have lower felony arrest rates than both legal immigrants and, especially, native-born U.S. citizens." 

‘NO EXCUSE’ – Democratic California state lawmakers are joining forces to pressure Gov. Gavin Newsom to extend health care coverage to all Californians, including undocumented immigrants, reports Angela Hart for Kaiser Health News. They plan to introduce a two-bill package, jointly proposed by state Sen. María Elena Durazo (Los Angeles) and Assembly member Joaquin Arambula (Fresno), would cover all undocumented senior immigrants first, then eventually the rest of the state’s undocumented population. Said Sarah Dar, director of health and public benefits for the California Immigrant Policy Center: "Now we have a full picture of what this crisis is, and the blatant disparities faced by our essential workers, so there's no excuse. Immigrant communities and farmworkers in the food and agricultural sector, like meatpacking plants, have literally been hotbeds for the spread of disease."

OUT OF TIME – In a heart-wrenching profile, The Washington Post’s Katie Mettler and Rachel Chason tell the story of Maryland resident Edgar Diaz-Palma, a 42-year-old father of three and undocumented Guatemalan immigrant, who was deported on Dec. 1 after being stopped last month by an unmarked police vehicle for an alleged illegal U-turn. His family and friends had hoped to stay his deportation until President-elect Biden took office, but after weeks of advocacy on his behalf, time ran out. U.S. Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Maryland) told the Post that the case "is part of what he worries is an escalation of deportations by Trump in the administration’s final months." Diaz-Palma had been working for years to gather his immigration paperwork, but struggled to find an attorney when the pandemic hit. Since his deportation, his family has struggled to make ends meet: his partner, Lily Santos, "said she does not know how they are going to pay their rent and has been relying on a friend and a local nonprofit group for food — including on Thanksgiving — since Diaz-Palma was detained."

Thanks for reading,

Ali