NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

** **Progressives in Congress are gearing up to push President-elect
Biden to fundamentally reimagine our immigration system, according to a
draft resolution

co-sponsored by Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and Yvette Clarke of New York, Judy Chu of California,
Jesús García of Illinois, and Veronica Escobar of Texas first
obtained by Nicole Narea at Vox
.
But as Franco Ordoñez notes for NPR
,
advocates pushing for the boldest of those demands may run up against
"inherent limits on executive powers."

In my own conversation with Ordoñez, I stressed that the administration
should look toward a return to Obama-era enforcement priorities: "From
the perspective of the immigrant community, they want to live in a safe
community just like anybody else. So, I don't think that the immigrant
community wants to see a moratorium on the deportation of public safety
threats."

****The Forum has laid out a list of sustainable immigration policy
priorities

that the incoming Biden-Harris administration can champion within its
first 100 days - all of them with strong bipartisan support.

Welcome to Monday'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]
.

[link removed]

**BORDER RUSH**-

****Amid President-elect Joe Biden's promises of a more humane border
policy, more migrants driven by economic distress and natural disasters
across Latin America are attempting to cross into the U.S., reports
Miriam Jordan for The New York Times
.
"The pressures that have caused flows in the past have not abated and,
in fact, have gotten worse because of the pandemic. If there is a
perception of more-humane policies, you are likely to see an increase of
arrivals at the border," said T. Alexander Aleinikoff, director of the
Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School in New
York. New caravans are forming in Honduras, while migration from Mexico
is up for the first time in 15 years as the pandemic has "decimated"
livelihoods. The Biden administration, which has vowed to reverse
Trump's harsh immigration policies, will be forced to grapple with
these numbers without "opening the floodgates," Jordan writes. Said
Alfonso Mena, who spent six nights in the desert before being
apprehended by U.S. officials and returned to Mexico: "What wouldn't
you do to help your children get ahead? ... We are not bad people. We
come to work." Last year, our policy team put together resources on the
factors driving Central American migration

and how the U.S. can address it
. 
 

**VIOLATION** -

****U.S. border officials "have expelled at least 66 unaccompanied
migrant children without a court hearing or asylum interview since a
federal judge ordered
 them
to stop the practice," Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News
.
Trump administration officials conceded this weekend that the expulsions
were a "contravention" of a November ruling from District Court Judge
Emmet Sullivan, which "prohibits the Trump administration from using a
pandemic-era emergency border policy to expel minors who are apprehended
without their parents or legal guardians." Children expelled in
violation of the policy were between 12 and 17 years old, and one turned
out to be a U.S. citizen. This weekend's declarations "represent the
second time the Trump administration has admitted to expelling
unaccompanied migrant children in violation of November's court order,"
Montogay-Galvez writes.

**BACKING OFF** -

****In a victory for the area's immigrant communities and advocates,
the San Diego Sheriff's Department has announced that it will back off
its policy of publicly sharing the release dates of people in custody
- information that immigration advocates say "was being used by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help it arrest immigrants
for possible deportation," reports Max Rivlin-Nadler for KPBS
.
The policy went into effect in 2017 and aimed to "curb local law
enforcement's relationship with ICE," but faced years of protests.
"For now this is a big win for our communities, because we're making
things harder for [ICE]," said Lilian Serrano, chair of the San Diego
Immigrant Rights Consortium. "Sometimes we might not be able to fully
stop their actions, but we can definitely make things harder for them,
and in that way mitigates the impact in our communities and reduces the
amount of people affected by it."

[link removed]

**MISSING PARENTS** - Tracking down the parents that the Trump
administration separated from their children at the border under its
"zero-tolerance" policy has proven to be a daunting task given the lack
of information about parents, many of whom live in rural areas or
continue to distrust the U.S. government. Writing for the Arizona
Republic
,
Daniel Gonzalez explains the difficult task that lawyers and human
rights defenders like Rebeca Sanchez Ralda have in reuniting separated
families. Cathleen Caron, executive director of Justice in Motion -
one of the groups working to find parents - notes that parents feel
they have been "deceived by the U.S. government. Their kids were taken
away. They (were deported). They don't have much reason to trust that
they have any control over their children."

**WILDLIFE CONCERNS**- Contractors in Arizona's Coronado National
Memorial, which happens to be in the path of one of 29 border wall
construction projects, are "dynamiting mountainsides and bulldozing
pristine desert" to build as much of President Trump's signature
project as they can before he leaves office in January, reports John
Burnett at NPR
.
The Department of Homeland Security has waived "dozens

of federal environmental protections" to make way for the construction
project, which is expected to be cancelled once President-elect Biden
enters office. Conservationists like Gary Nabhan, an author and
ethnobotanist in the region, are worried about the long-term effects:
"The wall is going through such sensitive areas and going up so fast
that no one knows what effect it's going to have on wildlife."

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

DONATE

 

**Follow Us**

 

[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]

 

 

 

The

**Only in America** podcast brings you to the people behind our
nation's immigration debate.

 

Listen now on:

 

**iTunes**
,
**Stitcher**
,
**Spotify** ,
and **more.**

 

 

National Immigration Forum

50 F Street NW, Suite 300

Washington, DC 20001

www.immigrationforum.org

 

Unsubscribe from Noorani's Notes
or opt-out from all Forum emails.

 

                                               
           
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

National Immigration Forum, 50 F Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001, United States