Your weekly summary from the Council

 LATEST ANALYSIS 

• Firsthand Experiences Inside ICE Facilities During the Pandemic Underscore Why Detention Should be Abolished
  
  “Today, within this crowded detention facility, all of us are victims of this pandemic… We only ask to fight for our lives with our families at our sides.” Read More »
   
• Supreme Court Considers the Future for Thousands of People With TPS
  
  The U.S. Supreme Court is contemplating whether certain people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) may get their green card. The outcome of the case, Sanchez v. Mayorkas, has serious implications for thousands of people granted TPS protection in the United State. Read More »
   
• The First 100 Days: Biden on Immigration Detention
  
  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) narrowed its enforcement priorities focus to those suspected of being a threat to national security, border security, and public safety. Yet, thousands of people who are not enforcement priorities and many who remain at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19 are still needlessly locked in detention. Read More »

 FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW  

• The Biden administration announced it is seeking to increase legal pathways for those interested in performing seasonal work in the U.S. this year. If accomplished, the move would offer 22,000 additional guest worker visas—a substantial increase in the number of H-2B visas—which otherwise caps at 66,000 per year and allows people to enter the U.S. for seasonal work in industries such as tourism and landscaping. 

  Current U.S. immigration law provides several paths for foreign workers to enter the United States for employment purposes on a temporary or permanent basis. This fact sheet from the American Immigration Council provides basic information about how the employment-based U.S. immigration system works.

  Read more: Employment-Based Visa Categories in the United States

 ACROSS THE NATION 

• The Biden administration’s deadline to conduct a 100-day review of its enforcement priorities is fast approaching. Meanwhile ICE has yet to announce a formal process to review the cases of those in its custody for release.

  The American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign—a nationwide network of volunteer attorneys and advocates that serves thousands of detained individuals who would otherwise go unrepresented—is working to ensure people have the help of a dedicated attorney to ask ICE to review their cases and release them from detention.

  Understanding the experiences of detained individuals and the harsh realities of immigration detention are an important reminder of why we must ensure that ICE is held accountable to its new enforcement priorities and case review process. 

  Read more: Impacted Individuals Build the Case to End Immigration Detention

 QUOTE OF THE WEEK 

“The Trump-era approach to interior enforcement was to cast as wide a net as possible, to enforce immigration law by dragnet, with the goal of terrorizing communities, instilling fear and, ultimately, the sort of overarching goal was to create deterrents to immigrating to the United States.

"What the Biden administration did was to try to create priorities and new levels of oversight mechanisms to redirect immigration enforcement so that we’re not going after people who have been in the United States for many years, people who have strong ties to our communities.”

– Jorge Loweree, policy director at the American Immigration Council

 FURTHER READING 

• The Nation: Climate Change Will Force Us to Rethink Migration and Asylum
   
• The Hill: Biden to offer 22K additional guest worker visas, 6K targeted toward Northern Triangle
   
• CNN (Opinion): New What America would look like with zero immigration

 SAVE THE DATE  

• Join the Council on May 6, 2021 for an exciting, free virtual evening where we will celebrate storytelling and its power to inspire change.

Register for the 2021 American Heritage Awards

  JOIN OUR RECURRING DONON PROGRAM 

• Become a Council Catalyst today and join us as we create a more fair, just, and welcoming immigration system.
  
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