The Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday that it will begin collecting DNA samples from potentially hundreds of thousands of migrants in U.S. custody.
“A letter in August to the White House from the Office of Special Counsel cited an official whistle-blower complaint alleging that immigration agencies had failed to carry out their full obligations under the law to collect DNA,” Caitlin Dickerson at The New York Times reports.
Privacy concerns abound: “The new rules would allow the government to collect DNA from children, as well as those who seek asylum at legal ports of entry and have not broken the law.”
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SURVEILLANCE – Speaking of privacy concerns, in a new feature in The New York Times, McKenzie Funk does a deep dive into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s wide range of surveillance tactics that are being deployed to aggressively deport undocumented immigrants. The piece “reveals new evidence of surveillance of detainees’ voice and video calls at ICE facilities and extensive proof that the agency relies on state D.M.V. databases and information products like CLEAR, from Thomson Reuters, to target immigrants.” A read well worth your time.

FILING DEADLINE – A Department of Justice draft proposal obtained by BuzzFeed News offers more evidence of how the Trump administration wants to make it harder for unaccompanied migrant children to secure asylum, Hamed Aleaziz reports. “Under the draft proposal, if a child does not apply for asylum with USCIS within two months after appearing before a judge for an initial hearing, the judge will move forward with the case, as opposed to continuing it until a later time and waiting for USCIS to resolve the filing.” Two months to pull together an asylum case is a heavy lift for an immigration lawyer. Two months for an unaccompanied child is practically impossible.

DACA DEFENSE – Apple CEO Tim Cook has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court against the Trump administration’s effort to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, reports CNBC’s Kif Leswing. “Apple said it employs 443 dreamers, or people that DACA protects from deportation. … DACA deportations could cost the U.S. economy over $400 billion, according to a 2017 study.”

PUBLIC CHARGE – With the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule set to go into effect October 15, a series of new lawsuits filed in federal courts are attempting to block the rule, reports Abigail Hauslohner in the Washington Post. In one case, U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton “is expected to decide next week on whether to block the rule from taking effect.”

CONSTITUTIONAL STANDARD – Immigration-related cases are consistently held to a “far lower constitutional standard” than other government practices, George Mason University Pofessor of Law Ilya Somin argues in the Atlantic. “Abolishing constitutional double standards in immigration law would not end all immigration restrictions. But it would ensure that immigration policy is subject to the same constitutional constraints as other exercises of federal authority.”

NEVER REUNITED – As President Trump severely reduces the refugee ceiling, he has also given states and municipalities the power to deny refugee admissions for the first time in history, Julie Watson and David Sharp report for the Associated Press. “Trump’s executive order again thrusts states and cities into immigration policy, willingly or not, like when they had to decide whether to work closely with federal deportation officers or become ‘sanctuaries’ that limit cooperation.” Mica Rosenberg and Elias Biryabarema at Reuters explore the human consequences, telling the story of Somali refugee Ramlo Ali Noor, who lost one of her 3 sons to a brain infection during the years-long wait for them to be admitted into the U.S.

SEPARATE PROCESSES – The Department of Homeland Security is claiming that the administration’s reductions in refugee admissions will allow more resources to be used to clear the case backlog for asylum seekers in immigration court — “But, asylum seekers and refugees go through two separate processes and history shows the U.S. has the ability to accept more refugees than it is currently accepting,” writes Gretchen Frazee for PBS NewsHour.

Thanks for reading,

Ali