NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

After Mexico passed a law in November mandating that children and
families can no longer be held in immigration detention facilities, the
country has now stopped accepting some Central American families
expelled by U.S. officials at the border, report Nick Miroff and
Kevin Sieff of The Washington Post
.  

This means that in the Rio Grande Valley, adults arriving at the
U.S.-Mexico border with children "are now being taken to the Border
Patrol station in McAllen for processing, and then typically released
into the U.S. interior." Alarmingly, "[U.S. Customs and Border
Protection] officials do not administer coronavirus tests to migrants
in their custody and do not have the capacity to do so" - an issue
that deeply concerns local officials in South Texas, which has been
devastated by the pandemic.  

Miroff and Sieff write that the Biden administration is working with
Mexico to increase shelter capacity for families, "while coordinating
the release of families through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), which has better testing capacity and the ability to more
carefully track families making asylum claims and seeking humanitarian
protections." 

Lots of moving parts here, folks.  

Welcome to Thursday'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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**LEGAL IMMIGRATION** - Noting that "President Biden's most
important legacy for the future of the U.S. economy and population may
be a welcoming immigration policy," our friend Stuart Anderson of
the National Foundation for American Policy  (NFAP)
summarizes a bevy of new research on the importance of legal
immigration for Forbes
,
including a research paper
 written
by NFAP's Madeline Zavodny and the Forum's new Room to Grow
 analysis.  Zavodny's
paper speaks to how international migration can play a larger role in
contributing to U.S. employment growth in both urban and rural
communities, while the Room to Grow
 analysis from
myself and colleague Danilo Zak suggests that setting immigration
levels based on the Old-Age Dependency Ratio (OADR), or the ratio of
working-age adults to adults at retirement age, is the best way to
build an immigration system that meets our nation's demographic
needs. (We'll be discussing the paper with our friends from Cato and
Niskanen at 2:30 p ET today - register for the virtual event here
.) Speaking
of legal immigration: For the final episode in our Only in America
 series
on the new administration's first 100 days, I talked to  FWD.us
 President Todd Schulte about undoing harmful
Trump-era policies, and why a broader vision for a legal immigration
system is vital for our nation's future.  

**CARRIZO SPRINGS** - The Biden administration will open an
overflow facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, for migrant children
apprehended at the US-Mexico border, reports CNN
's
Priscilla Alvarez. The facility, which can accommodate around 700
children, "comes amid an increase in apprehensions of unaccompanied
children on the Southwest border, fueled in part by deteriorating
conditions in Latin America and a perceived possible relaxation of
enforcement, and reduced capacity limits at other facilities due to
Covid-19." As of Thursday, the Office of Refugee Resettlement had some
4,730 children in their care, with case managers working to place
them with a parent or relative in the U.S. As we mentioned in
yesterday's Notes, the new administration also announced it will
not expel unaccompanied children
. Alvarez
notes that while Biden's actions are a welcome step, many migrants in
desperate situations still face uncertainty: "In the absence of
information over when border policies will be pulled back, immigrant
advocates and attorneys, who work directly with migrants along the
southern border, have been scrambling to get clarity to advise people,
many of whom are in life or death situations."  

**BACKLOG** - The Biden administration faces a backlog of
380,000 people waiting to immigrate to the U.S., a staggering
figure which immigration experts warn "could burden the [visa
application] system for years," reports Caleb Hampton of The New
York Times
. Luwam Beyene,
a permanent U.S. resident and mother of two, is struggling to provide
for her family as her husband's application process remains stalled
in Ethiopia: "He was near the finish line, awaiting only an in-person
interview with a consular officer, when the pandemic temporarily shut
down U.S. consulates last spring. 'They froze everything and we
never heard from them again,' Ms. Beyene said." President
Biden has indicated he will lift his predecessor's suspension of
most legal immigration, but Hampton explains that staffing
shortages at U.S. consulates worldwide, COVID-19 restrictions
and other limitations further complicate the issue. 

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**'ROGUE AGENCY' **- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) faces "multiple allegations of human rights abuses and allegations
that it has disproportionately targeted black migrants" amid new claims
of abuse and the continuation of deportations in defiance of Biden
administration orders, reports Julian Borger for The Guardian
. In
affidavits published by a coalition of immigrant rights
groups, Cameroonian asylum seekers "said they were tortured by being
forced to approve their own deportations." ICE has also been deporting
people who do not meet new DHS criteria: Paul Pierrilus
, a
financial consultant from New York State, was deported to Haiti on
Tuesday despite having never visited the country or holding Haitian
citizenship. "Unfortunately, Paul's story is not uncommon,"
said U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-New York). "Black immigrants have
been disproportionately targeted and deported by our racist, inhumane
immigration system, particularly in recent weeks." 

**'RIGHTING THE WRONGS'** - Faith-based groups are
applauding President Biden and sharing their hopes for his
administration's family reunification task force, reports Emily
McFarlan Miller for Religion News Service
. Lutheran
Immigration and Refugee Services, which along with the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops has assisted the government in reuniting more than
1,100 families amid the family separation crisis, called the task
force "a monumental first step in addressing the imperative question of
how we make these families whole again" in a statement from President
and CEO Krish O'Mara Vignarajah. Nathan Bult of Bethany Christian
Services added that making these families whole again is "not just
about reunifying families or, you know, providing relief from
deportation, but it's also about righting the wrongs and making sure
that they can start a new life on the right foot."  

Thanks for reading,

Ali

 

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