NPR’s Franco Ordoñez is out this morning with new details on the administration’s plans to fix our asylum system. The plan, which has not been formally announced, would take asylum cases backlogged in Department of Justice immigration courts and "instead handle them under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, where asylum officers already process tens of thousands of cases a year." 

On first blush, the movement of cases to trained asylum officers makes a lot of sense. Especially when, as Reuters reported in March, 42% of immigration judges hired by the Trump administration "had no immigration experience." Trump-era hires were also "twice as likely to have military court experience, which Reuters found was linked to a higher rate of deportation orders." 

Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention continues to use taxpayer dollars to pay for empty beds, reports Joel Rose of NPR. Since ICE released hundreds of people to lower the risk of COVID-19 and shifted enforcement priorities to focus on public safety threats, the number of detainees has dropped from a peak of 55,000 under Trump to just over 14,000 now.  

Because of guaranteed revenue contracts, "ICE pays more than $1 million a day for empty detention beds," according to an NPR analysis. "The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office published a report earlier this year documenting a significant jump in the number of guaranteed minimum beds ICE agreed to in detention contracts signed during the Trump administration." 

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].  

LUIS — 34-year-old Guatemalan Luis Alberto Paredes was found limping and struggling at the border after being lost in the brush for five days without food, reports Sandra Sanchez for Border Report. While Border Patrol agents, state troopers and law enforcement personnel are focusing efforts on the influx of migrant families and unaccompanied migrant youth at the border, "desolate regions of Texas farther north, like rural Brooks County, often contend with a harsher reality: Recovering the bodies of migrants hopelessly lost in an unforgiving terrain," Sanchez explains.  

ENFORCEMENT — Hundreds of Honduran migrants — including families — set out for the Guatemalan border Tuesday in the hopes of eventually reaching the U.S., Delmer Martínez and Claudio Escalon report for the Associated Press. "But relatively few arrived at the official border crossing and likely decided to cross at the numerous blind points along the border to avoid detection," they note. Part of the reason is that "Guatemalan and Mexican governments have taken a harder line against such caravans in recent times under pressure from the United States."  

UTAH — In an op-ed for The Salt Lake Tribune, DACA recipient Bernardo Castro describes his experience living with "quasi-legal protection that provides us with work authorization but no safety net." Bernardo has a degree in business management and is pursuing the "American Dream of entrepreneurship" — but "with recent pending judicial rulings putting the status of DACA recipients in jeopardy, I still worry that every day might be my last day in this country." Other members of Utah’s immigrant community are also awaiting permanent solutions: Annie Knox at Deseret News shares the story of Vicky Chavez and her two daughters, who have lived in sanctuary at the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City for the past three years after fleeing Honduras. Chavez and three other undocumented women from other states have filed a lawsuit "[alleging] U.S. immigration officials under then-President Trump stuck them each with roughly $60,000 in fines — a civil penalty for not leaving the country — because they spoke out about their cases." FYI: In our upcoming Only in America series, we’re taking a virtual road trip around Utah to talk to residents about how immigration impacts them and where Utahns think we should go from here.