NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Supporters of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)  are
calling on U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas to wait on making a
ruling in the latest legal challenge to the program until
President-elect Biden is sworn in, reports Josh Gerstein for POLITICO
Pro

[paywall]. The lawsuit in question, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken
Paxton and nine other states in 2018, seeks to halt DACA on grounds that
the Obama administration did not have authority to implement the program
in the first place. "Given ... the ongoing federal transition we think
this court can expect further changes to that framework soon," said New
Jersey State Solicitor Jeremy Feigenbaum, who is representing the states
supporting DACA in the lawsuit. "Policies can be a bit of a moving
target during [a] transition."

Welcome to Wednesday'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]
.

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**'INSUFFICIENT'** - Unlike Congress' first COVID relief bill,
this week's package will include stimulus checks for

**some**U.S. citizens who are married to immigrants. Anyone who files
using a Social Security Number will now be included in relief, yet those
who file with an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) will
not. As Dianne Solis of the Dallas Morning News

reports, this only fixes part of the problem. Trinh Nguyen, a Vietnamese
immigrant, and her husband Aaron Jones, an American citizen who lost his
job during the pandemic, were both excluded from stimulus checks the
first time around. Now, Jones will receive a $600 stimulus check - but
his wife will not. "It's better than nothing but wildly insufficient
in proportion to the actual problems," Jones said.

**THE FIRST DOSES**-

****A Somali refugee who fled war at home to come to the U.S. is now one
of the essential workers delivering the first doses of the COVID-19
vaccine, writes Tony Messenger for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[paywall]. Messenger spoke to 27-year-old Sa'ad Hussein while Hussein
was on an overnight trucking route - the same route he had taken to
deliver the Pfizer vaccine to New York last week: "It's very
important," Hussein says. "It's a big responsibility." Hussein and his
friend Saadiq Mohammed, who played for the Somali national soccer team,
were previously the subjects of "Men in the Arena," a documentary which
covered their experiences trying to survive in the war-torn country.
Before arriving in the U.S., Hussein - who had become a national hero
after scoring a winning goal in Somalia's national soccer championship
- was "living in squalor in Kenya, hiding from terrorists who had
threatened to kill him." Said Jessica Herschend, who took in Hussein and
Mohammed when they first arrived in the U.S.: "He's a part of history
and helping to save countless lives. ... I couldn't be more proud to
call him family."

**MEDICAL ABUSE** - More than 40 of the women who were allegedly
subjected to invasive medical procedures without consent by a Georgia
gynecologist while in ICE custody have now filed a class-action lawsuit

against the doctor and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
reports Rowaida Abdelaziz for HuffPost
.
The women also allege in the lawsuit that ICE and LaSalle Corrections
officers at the Irwin County Detention Center retaliated against the
women who spoke out about the medical abuse. At the press conference
about the lawsuit on Tuesday, Elizabeth, a 21-year-old detainee, told
her story: "I just feel like I have no control over my body anymore. ...
The people that we trust, the medical staff that is here, we can't
trust them anymore. We don't know what they are doing with our
bodies."

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**"CHRISTMAS MIRACLE"**-

****Thousands of Salvadoran, Haitian, and Honduran Temporary Protected
Status (TPS) recipients witnessed a "Christmas miracle" this month when
federal immigration officials announced they would extend TPS for nine
months. At least 13,000 TPS recipients in North Carolina alone will see
their status extended, Aaron Sánchez-Guerra reports for the Raleigh
News & Observer
. TPS
recipients like Glenda Polanco, a departmental assistant at Meredith
College who is on track to earn her Master in Business Administration
degree, are hoping to continue building their lives in this country -
but are still waiting for a more permanent solution. Says Polanco: "I
think it's definitely a breath of fresh air to know [TPS] has been
extended, but this isn't a permanent solution and it doesn't take
away the stress once October comes again." Meanwhile, Ted Hesson and
Laura Gottesdiener report for Reuters

that the incoming Biden administration is considering granting TPS to
"more than a million immigrants from Honduras and Guatemala" after
hurricanes Eta and Iota devastated the countries in November.

**FLAMIN' HOT**- Something fun: In a Twitter thread, Ankith Harathi
tells the
story of the meeting that made Richard Montañez, the son of a Mexican
immigrant working as a janitor in a Frito-Lay plant, worth $20 million.
When Frito-Lay struggled in the 1980s, the CEO announced solicited ideas
from all 300,000 of his employees. Montañez, inspired by the spices on
Mexican street corn, called the CEO - and was invited to the boardroom
to pitch his concept, which became Flamin' Hot Cheetos. "I saw there
were no products catering to Latinos," he explained, noting the Latino
market was "ready to explode." The CEO loved his idea - and one of the
most successful launches in company history was born. CNBC
,
The Hustle and Newsweek

have all reported on Montañez's journey from janitor to PepsiCo
executive.

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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