NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

According to statistics
 released
Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) agents apprehended a total of 172,331 migrants at
the border in March - the busiest month in nearly two decades,
reports Nick Miroff at The Washington Post.
The fastest-growing
group were members of family units
:
52,904 were taken into custody in March, up from 19,246 in February. 

The number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border also
increased significantly. Camilo Montoya-Galvez at CBS News
 reports
that nearly 18,900 unaccompanied migrant children entered U.S. custody
along the border with Mexico in March, and more than 20,000
unaccompanied minors in U.S. government custody - both record highs,
although this group makes up only slightly over 10%
of total encounters.  

Montoya-Galvez adds that the Biden administration is defending its
efforts to process migrants humanely, swiftly and lawfully. The
Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has increased capacity at its
network of state-licensed shelters, and "has secured the assistance of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency and hundreds of volunteers from
across the federal government who have been assigned to facilitate the
release of migrant children to sponsors." The Post adds that Biden
officials said they're deploying USAID disaster-assistance teams to
Guatemala and Honduras "to alleviate some of the most acute needs from
storm damage in those nations." 

To truly understand what these numbers mean, we need to contextualize
them. See our explainer video
, Ali's
twitter thread
 and
Forum Senior Policy and Advocacy Associate Danilo Zak's updated
border explainer
 for
a more in-depth look at long-term border patterns, the impact of Title
42 and more.  

One more thing: As I've mentioned before, when talking about the
situation at the border we need to be mindful of the language we use. My
colleague Dynahlee Padilla shared this recent piece from Poynter
 that
explains why the complexities of immigration necessitate more nuanced
language. (And why terms like "surge" and "flood" shouldn't be used
to describe human beings.) 

Welcome
to Friday's edition of Noorani's Notes. I'm Joanna
Taylor, Communications Manager at the Forum and your NN host today. Ali
is back Monday, but my inbox is still open for any
tips, suggestions or feedback  - you can reach me at
[email protected]
.   

[link removed]

**EIS EXPANSION** - The Department of Health and Human Services
recently announced the opening of three more "Emergency Intake
Sites" (EIS) for unaccompanied migrant children in Texas while two
other sites are being considered in California,
reports Fernie Ortiz for Border Report
. At
the time of reporting on Tuesday, Dimmit EIS in Carrizo Springs (also
home to the Carrizo Springs Influx Care Facility) and Pecos EIS in
Pecos had received their first groups of children, while the Delphi
EIS in Donna was expected to receive it first group that day.

* Related reading: Stef W. Kight at Axios
 has
a good explainer on the new facilities, while Rep. Veronica
Escobar (D-Texas) spoke to The Intercept'
s
Ryan Grim about her visit to an El Paso facility for unaccompanied
children and what a better border approach could look like. 

**FAMILY SEPARATION** - The Biden administration's family
separation task force "is scouring through thousands of unreviewed files
to determine whether the Trump administration began separating families
within the first six months of coming into office," reports NPR
's Franco
Ordoñez. The task force has uncovered 5,600 files from ORR between
Jan. 20, 2017 (the day Trump was sworn in as president) and July
2017 and is manually reviewing them to determine if families at the
border were separated earlier than previously known. "[It's] our hope
and expectation that this process will review only a few additional
families," said one DHS official. "But it's important to look through
them and make sure." Ordoñez notes that concerns around
earlier-than-known family separation have grown since the Justice
Department's Office of the Inspector General found that children had
been separated from their parents during a pilot program prior to the
infamous "zero tolerance" policy of 2018. 

[link removed]

**LOCAL SOLUTIONS **- When it comes to COVID-19 vaccine access,
immigrant communities face a particular set of challenges, from language
barriers to ID requirements. Across the country, local organizations are
working to address them. Here are some recent examples:  

*

**In Maine**, vaccine appointments can only be booked in English, making
the process impossible for many of the state's immigrants. As Blair
Best of Fox 23 News
 reports,
leaders at Catholic Charities of Maine are filling gaps in the
government's approach and "are now calling new Mainers one by one,
asking if they need help."  

*

**Down in Florida**, undocumented workers (many of whom have worked in
essential industries throughout the pandemic) are being turned away at
vaccination sites for not having federal identification or proof of
residency, report Monique O. Madan, Alex Roarty and Michael
Wilner for the Miami Herald.
 The nonprofit Guatemalan-Maya
Center  has stepped in to help,
reaching an agreement with the Palm Beach County Health Department
to allow its members to get the vaccine by showing a statement with
the group's official letterhead verifying ID. The Florida Department
of Health told the Herald it is "planning to provide outreach
vaccination efforts to this population to ensure they have equal access
to the vaccine." 

*

**Over in Arkansas**, the immigrant resource center Arkansas
United is working toward more equitable vaccine distribution for
communities of color, reports Lydia Fielder of ABC affiliate 40/29
News
. In
addition to connecting the immigrant community in Springdale to
vaccines via fundraising efforts as well as help from local
pharmacies and the state health department, the group is organizing
a rally at the state capitol. AU founding executive director Mireya
Reith said the rally is intended to "[plant] the seed for what we
hope are conversations that could be had either at the end of this
session or even the next session in regards to both lessons we've
learned from COVID-19 and the disproportionate impact on our immigrant
communities." 

**GENDER AND ASYLUM** - In an op-ed for The Washington Post
, Jamie
Gorelick and Layli Miller-Muro point out a critical omission in U.S.
asylum law: "Persecution on account of gender is not included." They
note that the global framework for refugee protection is still based on
a treaty adopted in 1951, "when the legal rights of women were barely
recognized." As part of Fauziya Kassindja
's asylum
case in 1996, Gorelick and Miller-Muro "helped to crack open the door
for women to argue that gender-based asylum claims should be granted
under the 'particular social group' category in the [Refugee Act of
1980]." However, legal rights don't automatically translate to real
protection: "Most asylum seekers cannot afford immigration attorneys,
and free lawyers who specialize in gender-based asylum are rare." A
better solution? "As other countries already have
,
the United States should amend its law to expressly recognize
gender-based persecution as a basis for asylum." 

Have a great weekend, 

Joanna  

 

DONATE

 

**Follow Us**

 

[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]

 

 

 

The

**Only in America** podcast brings you to the people behind our
nation's immigration debate.

 

Listen now on:

 

**iTunes**
,
**Stitcher**
,
**Spotify** ,
and **more.**

 

 

National Immigration Forum

50 F Street NW, Suite 300

Washington, DC 20001

www.immigrationforum.org

 

Unsubscribe from Noorani's Notes
or opt-out from all Forum emails.

 

                                               
           
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

National Immigration Forum, 50 F Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001, United States