As states have begun their vaccination campaigns, it’s become clear that immigration status is playing a major role in who gets vaccinated. 

Nebraska says undocumented residents aren’t a priority. California wants to ensure that immigrants are at the front of the line because many work in essential jobs on farms. And some immigrants are considering forgoing the vaccine because they’re afraid the government will use their personal information against them. 

Our immigration team will be keeping an eye on how the vaccine is rolled out within the immigrant community, where many residents are essential workers – working in farms or factories, as hospitality workers or caregivers for the elderly.

As USA Today reported recently, immigration advocates are working to ensure that immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, are not left behind by the government’s vaccine efforts. In California, some state lawmakers want undocumented workers to be prioritized for vaccines. “Vaccination will only work if two things happen,” California Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia told USA Today. “One, if farmworkers feel confident and safe in taking it. And two, if we’re doing it across the board irrespective of an individual’s immigration status.”

In Massachusetts, immigration advocates and attorneys are already seeing signs of resistance and fear, WGBH News reported this week. At the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, immigrants have expressed concern that personal information they provide at an appointment might be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ultimately lead to their deportation.

“The Trump administration has created such tremendous fear and insecurity in immigrant communities that the trust has been broken,” civil rights attorney Iván Espinoza-Madrigal told WGBH News. “It's going to take a significant effort from public health officials and local governments to fill that trust gap so that immigrants can come forth for vaccination.”

And this week, Nebraska became the first state to announce it would consider immigration status in its immunization campaign. The governor’s office said undocumented residents will have to wait behind U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. The news emerged after a briefing Monday in which reporters asked Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, whether undocumented workers at meat processing plants would be eligible for vaccines. “You’re supposed to be a legal resident of the country to be able to be working in those plants,” Ricketts replied. “So I do not expect that illegal immigrants will be part of the vaccine with that program.”

The governor’s office later clarified that undocumented immigrants would qualify for the vaccine, but the state would give priority to residents with legal status. It’s a move that some federal officials have cautioned against. “No one in this country should be denied a vaccine because of their documentation status,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” last month.  

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.

NEWS DEVELOPMENTS WE’RE WATCHING

Trump extends COVID-19 restrictions on green cards and visas. With just a few weeks left in office, President Donald Trump ordered a three-month extension on immigration-related bans issued at the beginning of the pandemic. His proclamation prohibits the issuance of green cards to people abroad who are seeking to move to the U.S. to be with family members or for work. He also halted guest worker programs such as the H-1B visa, which are temporary work permits filed by companies that want to hire high-skilled immigrants when there’s a shortage of American workers. As Reveal alum Sinduja Rangarajan reported in 2019, the denial rate for first-time applications increased under the Trump administration, from 10% in 2016 to 24% in 2019. Trump has previously said the restrictions “are necessary to prevent new immigrants and temporary workers from competing with Americans for jobs during the economic recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic,” CBS News reports. 

New DACA applications approved for the first time in years. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration cannot immediately dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era policy that allowed immigrants brought to the country at a young age to remain in the U.S., shielding them from deportation. But despite the ruling, the government still took steps to limit the program by no longer accepting new applications from undocumented youth who now qualify for the program. In December, a federal judge ordered the administration to begin accepting new applications. Court filings now show that the government approved 171 applications between Nov. 14 and the end of 2020, according to the Associated Press. President-elect Joe Biden has promised to protect the program. “On day one of my presidency, I will protect them from deportation and send a bill to Congress,” he said in June.

3 THINGS WE’RE READING

1. Detained immigrants in facilities ravaged by COVID-19 are abandoning their cases and requesting deportation. (The Washington Post) 

As COVID-19 outbreaks continue inside ICE detention facilities, more detainees are making the difficult choice between staying in detention and risking contracting the virus as they await a decision on their immigration cases, or returning to the countries where they once faced other dangers. 

The kicker: Kevin Euceda believed he was in imminent danger. Down the hall in the immigration detention center where he was being held, a man whose psychiatric visits had been suspended because of the pandemic was hallucinating and screaming. Others were shivering and sweating, scared they were going to die. Surrounded by so much sickness, Kevin was growing desperate to find a way out. A migrant who said he came to the United States when he was 17 years old to escape gang threats in Honduras, Kevin had been living for nearly three years in a place that was now being overrun by COVID-19. And so, last summer, after he was taken in shackles for his daily hour of outside time, he asked for a phone to be passed into his cell and called the pro bono legal clinic that had taken on his case in 2017, when it appeared that he was about to be granted asylum and freed. The lawyer who spoke to him that day remembered his voice sounding shaky, his words coming too fast to understand. “Whatever you can do to get me out of here, please make it happen,” Kevin said. 

2. The Trump administration is expelling migrant mothers and their U.S.-born babies to Mexico. (The Intercept)

At least three asylum-seeking mothers say they gave birth in U.S. hospitals, only to be picked up by border agents who swiftly expelled them to Mexico without giving them the opportunity to process their asylum claims or fill out citizenship paperwork for their U.S.-born babies, who by law are U.S. citizens. They were expelled under a CDC order that allows the government to rapidly deport immigrants during the pandemic. But some experts argue that the order doesn’t apply to babies born in the U.S. 

The kicker: “The law does not allow for the rapid expulsion of U.S. citizens,” said Nicole Ramos, director of the Border Rights Project at Al Otro Lado, a legal and social services organization that is investigating the expulsions. Al Otro Lado, which has a presence in San Diego, Los Angeles and Tijuana, Mexico, said it is aware of a total of eight mothers in this situation, two of whom it’s lost contact with and the rest of whom remain in Mexico. One such mother, Lupe, was the subject of a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security this summer. At the time, CBP claimed that she had departed voluntarily with her toddler and chalked the situation up to a fluke. In an interview with The Intercept, Lupe said that not only had she not been asked about the expulsion or given affirmative consent for her citizen child to be expelled alongside her, but also she wasn’t even aware that she was being turned back to Mexico until she saw the Mexican border agents waiting for her. 

3. Thousands of immigrants have spent years in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status. Now they await a permanent fix under Biden. (The Dallas Morning News)

More than 400,000 immigrants who fled their countries due to natural disasters or war are here under Temporary Protected Status, which protects them from deportation and gives them the ability to work. Following the Trump administration’s attempts to end these protections since 2017, program recipients are hoping that the Biden administration will pave the way for Congress to grant them permanent status.   

The kicker: Dalila Sandoval has been in immigration limbo for nearly two decades. During that time, she’s moved from university custodian to college student to volunteer organizer in a national alliance devoted to immigrants with work permits and temporary protection from deportation. The 52-year-old native of El Salvador and mother of two U.S. citizens is pushing for permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants holding Temporary Protected Status, or TPS. TPS is a U.S. humanitarian program that allows beneficiaries to live and work in the U.S. because of civil wars, natural disasters and other extraordinary events. President-elect Joe Biden has said he will order an “immediate review” of TPS when sworn in, and will protect those immigrants from return to unsafe countries. Sandoval’s not satisfied. “We need to pressure the Senate, Republicans and Democrats,” said Sandoval, who made a pre-pandemic lobbying trip to Capitol Hill with other TPS holders.

NEWS BREAK: SWATHED IN NOSTALGIA

They’re large, heavy and usually emblazoned with images of lions, Aztec warriors or pandas. In her latest story, Los Angeles Times reporter Esmeralda Bermudez pens a tribute to the San Marcos blanket and explains its popularity among Latino families for the last 40 years. 

From the Los Angeles Times story: 

First produced in 1976, the San Marcos ceased production in 2004. That only made Latinos want them more.

Paula Valenzuela remembers seeing the vivid designs as a young girl in Florida. Fieldworkers toiling in her grandfather’s fruit groves brought them in from Mexico.

“I remember asking my mom over and over for one, but she had no clue where to find them,” said Valenzuela, who is White and now married to a Mexican. 

When she moved to the border town of El Centro five years ago, her Mexican neighbors helped her find several blankets for her family. They taught her how to spot the real ones: They were sturdier, didn’t shed and came with a San Marcos tag.

“I wanted more and more,” the 46-year-old said. “Every available minute I had, I spent looking for blankets, begging people to sell me theirs.” 

She went to swap meets and yard sales across Southern California and Arizona. Other people searched on her behalf too.

By 2010, Valenzuela had collected almost 400 San Marcoses – designed with horses, kittens, cheetahs and all kinds of flowers.

She kept them stored in a trailer until her husband threatened to call the “Hoarders” television show.

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– Laura C. Morel