Taking a step back: “By late Friday, three different federal courts had shot down three of the president’s more draconian policies aimed at shutting off the flow of migrants into the U.S.,” writes the Los Angeles Times editorial board:

(1) Flores – U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ruled against the administration’s attempt to undo the 1997 Flores settlement agreement, which limits the length of time that minors can be held in detention.

(2) Databases / Detainers – U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. held that the government cannot solely rely on databases “to determine a person’s removability.” He also ruled that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot hold inmates after their release dates in states that do not authorize such cooperation.

(3) Expedited Removal – U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson blocked the administration’s proposed policy to expand the expedited removal process to the whole country, which bypasses immigration courts.

Since I only play a lawyer on television, I won’t prognosticate on the future of these cases. But, it is pretty clear Congress has relegated itself to the sidelines as the executive and judicial branches fight over the future of American immigration.

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

DIVING DEEP ON THE NEW EO – President Trump’s new executive order, which would allow state and local governments to refuse to take in refugees for resettlement, has major implications. Stuart Anderson in Forbes dives deep on the various angles of the new executive order, which “could play out in ways that might be characterized as ‘ugly.’” Not to mention its constitutionality. (ICYMI: here’s my Fox News op-ed on last week’s executive order and further limit on refugee admissions.)

RIGHTS – An attorney for the city of Southaven, Mississippi, is arguing that the victim of a fatal shooting by police “lacked constitutional rights because of his criminal record and undocumented immigration status,” Daniel Connolly reports for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The victim, Ismael Lopez, was shot and killed by police in July 2017 at his own home in a widely publicized case.

ANGELS UNAWARE – On World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Francis revealed a sculpture titled “Angels Unaware” depicting “140 migrants and refugees from various historical periods travelling on a boat and includes indigenous people, the Virgin Mary and Joseph, Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and those from war-torn countries.” Elisabetta Povoledo reports in the Independent that the pope “said the statue had been inspired by a passage in ‘Letter to the Hebrews’ from the New Testament: ‘Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.’”

POWERFUL PORTRAITS – Last week, as we reported in the Notes, nearly 30 USA Today reporters published an extraordinary project documenting the immigration crisis. Harrison Hill, one of the journalists on the ambitious effort, reflected on his work in USA Today: “There was a lot of uncertainty and fear in the voices of the migrants, but also a sense of hope. I wanted the portraits to humanize a broad issue that often renders people as a statistic.”

MOTHERS – A complaint was filed against The Department of Homeland Security for the mistreatment of pregnant migrant women under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, Quinn Owen reports for ABC News. The complaint was filed by the ACLU on behalf of migrant women who, between being sent back and forth to Mexico, were kidnapped, held for ransom, and prevented access to proper prenatal care. “Pregnant women should never have to worry about their safety or their health during pregnancy, and yet this is the situation CBP is forcing upon these expecting mothers,” said Astrid Dominguez, director of the ACLU Border Rights Center. Meanwhile, an undocumented mother gave birth to her daughter in a Colorado church where she has claimed sanctuary since 2017. The church is “the safest place to do so, she said, when stepping off of church property could mean being permanently separated from her children,” reports Scott Bixby in Daily Beast.

DULCE – The small, tight-knit community of Bridgeton, New Jersey, has been on edge since the disappearance of five-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez in September, Christina Goldbaum reports for The New York Times. In the community of mostly Latino immigrants, the investigation has “heightened fears among undocumented residents of law enforcement and deportation,” and state officials are concerned that residents “have been reluctant to come forward with tips to police about Dulce for fear that it could put them on ICE’s radar.” When our immigration policies cause people to fear cooperating with law enforcement, we’re all less safe.

TINY DESK – And now, a musical interlude: Musician Josh Ritter performed a Tiny Desk concert along with Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell, reports Bob Boilen at NPR. Each song focused on the treatment of refugees, immigration, politics and people’s hearts: “There was a time when we were them / Just as now they all are we / Was there an hour when we took them in? / Or was it all some kind of dream?” Then the trio ended with a new song called “The Gospel of Mary,” which “imagines Joseph, Mary and their child as refugees.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali