According to a new study, deportations do not lower crime rates in the United States, The Marshall Project’s Anna Flagg reports. Since 2017, the Secure Communities deportation program — which began under President George W. Bush and was then expanded and later discontinued under President Obama — focused on deporting all undocumented immigrants, not just those with serious convictions. But in places where deportations increased, crime rates have remained the same.
In fact, “Crime has been declining in many areas across the country for decades, and it continued to do so under Secure Communities. If deportation were an effective crime-prevention method, places that deported the most would display larger decreases in crime than other areas. No trends like that were observed.”
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes.
Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
FAMILIES – Yesterday the Trump administration announced that “If migrant family units do not claim fear of return, they will be quickly returned to their country of origin,” NPR’s Richard Gonzales reports. According to a Department of Homeland Security statement, if the families do claim fear, “they will generally be returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)” — also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. Your regular reminder that stranding migrants in Mexico is a great jobs program for the cartels.
ONE WEEK – Spend the time to read this: USA Today deployed 27 journalists, supported by at least 24 story editors, designers, producers, developers and social media editors, to report on migration over the course of one week in June across the U.S., Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala. Fantastic reporting by Rick Jervis, Manny Garcia, Alan Gomez, Daniel Gonzalez, more Daniel Gonzalez, even more Daniel Gonzalez, Daniel Connolly, Aaron Montes, and Lauren Villagran, Pamela Ren Larson and more. (Baseball card set of the entire team available soon?)
AFRICAN MIGRANTS – Central Americans aren’t the only ones stuck in Mexico: Migrants from Africa are also waiting there to fulfill their American dream, Patrick J. McDonnell writes in the Los Angeles Times. Much of the motivation to leave Africa is to escape political persecution: A man named Sani explained that he fled Ghana after being burned with acid, simply for being gay. Rubi Tmamba, a 17 year old from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said “If not the United States, then maybe Canada. But we have come this far in search of this dream. We are not going back now.”
BORDER ANGELS – In high school, Dulce Garcia hoped to attend college and become a lawyer, but a school counselor told her she couldn’t attend because she was undocumented. “He told me, ‘you're an illegal immigrant, you’re not going anywhere, you’re not even going to the community college across the street,’ she recalls. I told him, ‘you watch me,’ and I stormed out of there.” Now a lawyer, Garcia is helping others like herself, Julian Resendiz writes for Border Report. A member of the Border Angels, Garcia volunteers by providing legal, educational and community services to unauthorized immigrants as she continues to defy her counselor — and demonstrate what happens when young, talented people are given a chance to succeed.
FAKE NOTICES – Immigrants awaiting court hearings are receiving fake court dates and times, Monique O. Madan reports in the Miami Herald. The reason: The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that for an immigrant to be deportable, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is required to put specific dates and times on notices. “In order to comply with the ruling, immigration officials began sending notices with a time and place — even if they were fake. The reason, lawyers say, is because having a notice with a date and place allows the government to stop immigrants from qualifying for deportation relief.”
DETAINED – Though it has expanded under the Trump administration, America’s policy of immigrant detention is not new: Emily Kassie explains in The Guardian how the U.S. built the world’s largest immigrant detention system. “A modest system holding fewer than 3,000 migrants a day at the end of the 1970s, detention has now morphed into a sprawling machinery ensnaring immigrants across the country…” Today more than 52,000 migrants are in detention.
Thanks for reading,
Ali
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