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].

‘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."

"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