In a "death blow" to the U.S. asylum system, the Trump administration yesterday finalized a regulation that "would bar huge swaths of asylum seekers from obtaining protection, including those who face persecution on the basis of gender and resistance to gang recruitment, and as victims of criminal coercion," Vox’s Nicole Narea reports. "Those targeted by international criminal gangs like MS-13 will therefore likely face a much narrower path to asylum under the rule."

The regulation — set to take effect just nine days before the President-elect Biden takes office — will allow immigration officials to throw out asylum applications without hearings and "also refuse asylum to anyone coming from a country other than Canada or Mexico, who does not arrive on a direct flight to the US, who has resided in the US for more than one year, or who has failed to pay taxes, among other provisions."

In the final weeks before Inauguration Day, the Trump administration is expected to seek to impose further barriers to asylum seekers and foreign workers — and potentially end birthright citizenship, Narea reports, complicating immigration matters for the incoming Biden administration.

Not a lot of great news below, so spend a minute reading about how 20,000 students from 75 countries "researched, debated and drafted ‘resolutions’ tackling issues such as climate-induced displacement, toxic narratives about refugees, and the inclusion of refugees in economies and educational systems of host countries" as part of the Model UN Refugee Challenge. That is promising.

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].

‘NO CHOICE’ – After Hurricanes Eta and Iota struck Honduras last month just two weeks apart, destroying homes and crops and killing about 100 people, a few hundred Hondurans have formed a caravan headed for the U.S. in what will be "a fresh challenge to efforts to stem illegal immigration from Central America on the cusp of a new U.S. administration," Jose Cabezas reports for Reuters. "Mostly younger migrants with backpacks and some women carrying children left the northern city of San Pedro Sula on foot for the Guatemalan border after calls went out on social media to organize a caravan to the United States." An unidentified man in the caravan told Honduran television: "We lost everything, we have no choice but to go to the United States."

‘COMPASSION’ – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set to deport a Guatemalan immigrant and domestic violence survivor, Daris Bartolon, and her two daughters after an immigration judge in Detroit denied her asylum request. Returning to Guatemala would leave Bartolon’s daughter, Maddeline, who was born with rickets, without the medical care she needs, Niraj Warikoo reports for the Detroit Free Press. Their story has brought out Catholic advocates in Michigan to pray and protest their deportation while their attorney works to convince ICE to let the family stay another year. "There is no question that this family has been through so much already and yet they are here pleading to the U.S. government for compassion," U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Michigan) said. "The family deserves to be here to continue the medical treatment they are receiving at Shriners Hospital."

‘MISTRUST’ – As the country anxiously awaits the approval of a vaccine for COVID-19, some people, especially those in Latino and Black communities where trust in the government is low, are hesitant to take it as soon as it becomes available, report Ian Duncan and Arelis R. Hernández for The Washington Post: "A recent survey found that fewer than half of Black Americans and only 66 percent of Latinos would definitely or probably get vaccinated." Many Latinos cite the history of mistrust between the government and immigrant populations, including just this year when hysterectomies were allegedly performed on migrant women without their consent at a Georgia detention facility. Oscar Torres, a construction worker in Dallas, has taken it upon himself to be the messenger about the vaccine for his community: "I get it. A vaccine is the most important thing we can do to fight this pandemic. But...there is a lot of mistrust."

VANDALISM – Anti-Asian American sentiment continues to rise as the pandemic rages across the country, manifesting itself in cities like Santa Ana, just south of Los Angeles, where the Huong Tich Temple and five other Buddhist temples in the area were vandalized just last month. "15 of the temple’s Buddha and bodhisattva statues had been spray-painted. The word ‘Jesus’ in black letters had been emblazoned down one statue’s back," writes Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil for Religion News Service. Funie Hsu, a professor of American Studies at San Jose State University, said that for Asian Americans, religion has long been a "barrier to their acceptance" in the U.S., and Buddha statues in particular often serve as "a punching bag for any form of animosity people are feeling against Asians."

Thanks for reading,

Ali