NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Jack Herrera at POLITICO
 tells
the story of Rosemeri, an asylum seeker from El Salvador, who is one
of thousands of migrants in Tijuana who left shelters and apartments
for a makeshift encampment in the hopes of eventually entering the
U.S. following the election of President Biden. "By early March, it
had grown into a shantytown of more than 1,000 people, and today as many
as 2,000 migrants - most of them families with children - brave the
elements each day and night. Together, the makeshift community decided
on a name for the tent city: La Esperanza, The Hope." 

While lawmakers in Washington debate how to address the situation at the
U.S.-Mexico border, "[w]e want the authorities to simply tell us how
we will be processed," said Rosemeri. Herrera points out that
while Biden's rhetoric has been welcoming, it's the lack of clear
guidance for migrants that's causing challenges: "The issue isn't
Biden extending a hand; it's that he hasn't figured out what he
wants to do - and has kept the legal pathway closed in the
meantime." 

"This is a closed borders crisis, not an open borders crisis,"
said Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the Cato
Institute. "When people don't have the option to enter lawfully,
they're going to eventually try to come unlawfully. And the fact that
the president has laid out no real timeline for getting American
immigration laws back to normal is just going to increase the
uncertainty and illegality of actions along the border." 

Welcome to Friday'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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**WHITE HOUSE PRESSURE** - White House officials are "ramping up
pressure" on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
and other agencies to "speed up releases from its overloaded shelter
system to free up space for children packed into crowded border patrol
stations," per Ted Hesson, Mica Rosenberg, Kristina Cooke and Steve
Holland at Reuters
. According
to a Reuters analysis of government data, the number of children in HHS
custody has grown by more than 65% between the end of March and
mid-April - reaching more than 19,000 - while the number released
from shelters has stayed around 300 per
day. Some officials are critical of the White House
approach: "There's a balance of timeliness and safety. We can't just
release kids without doing checks."  

**CAPACITY** - NPR
's Joel
Rose further explains the challenges facing HHS and other agencies
responsible for unaccompanied migrant children, reporting that
while fewer migrant children are being held at
border facilities, politics and capacity issues leave HHS with "some
thorny problems to solve." Meanwhile, Dasha Burns and Julia
Ainsley at NBC News
 talk
to some of the parents trying to find their children in the HHS
system. This, folks, is the challenge: "At the start of this year, HHS
was able to match about one case manager to 12 children, but the number
of children per manager has shot up as the agency scrambles to hire more
people who can look after each child's welfare and placement in homes
with parents or sponsors. The spokesperson didn't provide the current
ratio."  

**A NUDGE** - "We have a moral responsibility in the world - as
every other country does, too - to receive refugees who have a
well-founded fear of persecution or harm [if they] return to their own
country," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) on
Thursday. Her message, Mike Lillis writes in The Hill
,
is a nudge to President Biden to increase the number of refugees being
accepted into the country: Despite campaign promises to welcome more
refugees after admissions dropped to historic lows under Trump, the
admissions cap is currently 15,000 - the lowest figure since Congress
passed the Refugee Act of 1980. Why is this happening? Sources told CNN
 that
Biden has not signed the presidential determination to raise the
Trump-era cap "because of political optics."  

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**ASYLUM AND ENFORCEMENT** - A new report
 from
the Migration Policy Institute reveals that "[a]sylum applications
and the number of migrants being detained in Mexico and Central America
have been growing as the U.S. has limited pathways for asylum seekers,"
per Law360
 [paywall]. The study
assessed humanitarian aid systems and enforcement actions in Mexico,
Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa
Rica, concluding that policymaking "has remained ad hoc in most of
these Central American countries, shifting between the foreign and
interior ministries, migration agencies, and the presidency, depending
on the moment and the external pressures that force action." MPI
President Andrew Selee, one of the report's five authors, summed up
the findings: "Enforcement itself isn't enough to manage migration." 

**THE FATE OF TPS** - Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, originally
from El Salvador, have legally resided in the U.S. under Temporary
Protected Status (TPS) for two decades. "But when the New Jersey couple
applied for green cards - which would let them remain permanently -
they were denied because they initially entered the country illegally,"
reports John Fritze of USA Today
.
They sued in 2015, and on Monday the Supreme Court will hear their
appeal
 "in a
case that has drawn little attention in Washington even as it has raised
significant questions about the Biden administration's approach to
immigration." As Biden's Justice Department prepares to defend the
2015 denial, the case underscores the need for a more permanent solution
from Congress (ironically, the Biden-backed U.S. Citizenship Act of
2021
 would
provide such a solution for TPS recipients like Jose and
Sonia.) "Integrate [TPS recipients] into our society rather than
leaving them in permanent limbo - in theory, that's what the Biden
administration says it wants to do," said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a
Georgetown University law professor and former immigration judge. "Only
here's their first chance to make it happen and they don't connect the
dots." 

**FINES** - In 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) began to "impose fines of hundreds of dollars a day
against [undocumented immigrants seeking sanctuary in places of
worship] for 'willfully' refusing to leave the country or having
'connived or conspired' to prevent their own deportation," writes
Tom Goldsmith, senior minister of Salt Lake City's First Unitarian
Church, in an op-ed for The New York Times
 with photos from Kim
Raff. The piece features Vicky Chávez, a mother who
fled Honduras and has been living in Goldsmith's church for three
years (and whose story we shared in the Notes earlier this
month). Chávez was among the immigrants living in sanctuary who
received "unconscionable fines - most of which were initially $200,000
to $500,000 and reissued at around $60,000." The critical
question: "Will [Biden] and his administration choose to defend a
Trump-era policy of retaliation and fear, or will he ensure justice for
these families and use his power to set them free?" 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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