A New York Times investigation finds that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s report of more than 12,000 cases of COVID-19 in detention "doesn’t tell the whole story, and that the agency also played a role in the spread of the virus," including in communities surrounding detention centers.
Isabelle Niu and Emily Rhyne write that "[a]s Covid-19 cases rose last June, ICE detention facilities had an average infection rate five times that of prisons and 20 times that of the general population." Moreover, "unlike the Federal Bureau of Prisons, ICE does not have its own systemwide plan to vaccinate people in custody."
The accompanying video by Niu, Rhyne and Aaron Byrd is worth your 15 minutes.
With a cheer to the Academy for choosing "Nomadland" as 2020’s best picture and Chloé Zhao as best director, welcome to Monday's edition of Noorani’s Notes. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s vice president of strategic communications and your guest editor today. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].
EVANGELICALS AND REFUGEES — Good reads today on evangelical Christians’ pushback when President Biden maintained a historically low refugee cap of 15,000 for this year. "[T]he actual tragedy isn’t that [President] Biden hasn’t kept his word: It’s that thousands of vulnerable children and families are left in harm’s way," writes Tess Clarke, Director of We Welcome Refugees, in an op-ed for Relevant Magazine. She points to her group's petition urging Biden to act, which nearly 5,000 people now have signed. Meanwhile, for Christianity Today, Stefani McDade’s reports on the "betrayal" evangelical advocates felt and the moral arguments they are making. As World Relief President Scott Arbeiter said, "[We] will always stand with refugees, regardless of who is president, whether he keeps his promises, or how the U.S. government decides to respond. And we’ll always seek to convene a Christian conscience on behalf of the marginalized."
SECURITY EXPERTS — Members of the Council on National Security and Immigration — security experts who served in the Trump and George W. Bush administrations — are pushing for a refugee admissions cap of 62,500, reports Caroline Simon of Roll Call. "The dismantling of the USRAP [U.S. Refugee Admissions Program] over the last four years under the false pretense that refugee resettlement is incompatible with national security has been heartbreaking," they wrote in a letter last week. "While we appreciate that your
administration is struggling with addressing the current situation at the southern border, we urge you to move swiftly to admit pre-approved refugees because they are not a security threat." Said Elizabeth Neumann, a founding member of the council and alumna of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security: "There was this strong disconnect between the actions that were underway throughout the government to try to achieve this goal, and then an announcement that, ‘No, you're keeping it at 15,000’ — it just did not make sense."
SENSE OF HOPE — As Vice President Kamala Harris’ work to address migration from Central America ramps up, she spoke about her approach on CNN’s "State of the Union" Sunday. "I come at this issue from the perspective that most people don't want to leave home," Harris said, per Joseph Choi at The Hill. "…We have to give people some sense of hope that if they stay that help is on the way." Harris said she had met with several members of President Biden's Cabinet to focus efforts on stemming the flow of migrants.
KIDNAPPED — Asylum seeker Carolina, 36, from Honduras, was told to wait in Mexico for her immigration hearing — then was kidnapped as she tried to return for her court date, reports Kevin Sieff of The Washington Post. By the time she and her 15-year-old daughter were released, Carolina had missed her court appearance. In the eyes of the law, her asylum case "had been closed in absentia because she hadn’t shown
up." While the Biden administration ended the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as "Remain in Mexico," in February and is bringing people whose cases remain active into the U.S., the 28,000 people like Carolina whose cases were closed in absentia are shut out, at least for now. "It’s hard to think because I was kidnapped on my way to my court hearing, I missed my only chance to make an asylum case," Carolina said.
DEBUNKED — In a piece for CNN, Ronald Brownstein dispenses with the racist "replacement theory" espoused by many immigration restrictionists. In fact, "[m]any of the Whites most drawn to the far-right argument that new arrivals are displacing ‘real Americans’ are among those with the most to lose if the nation reduces, much less eliminates, immigration in the decades ahead," he points out. The Census Bureau is forecasting growing
racial diversity no matter the future immigration level, and at the same time it "projects ominously slow growth in America's working-age population without more immigration." Translation: "Without more immigrants, those culturally anxious Whites face the virtual certainty of more financial pressure on their federal retirement benefits and slower economic growth for American society overall."
NEW VISION — A reminder that on May 6, we’re looking forward to joining the George W. Bush Institute and Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention to bring you a conversation with President George W. Bush on his new book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants. President Bush will be joined by Dr. Russell Moore, President of the ERLC, and Yuval Levin, Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Register for the free event here. One of the immigrants whose portraits Bush painted, Chobani Founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, was the keynote speaker recently at the The George W. Bush Presidential Center Forum on Leadership. It’s an entertaining conversation.
|
|---|
|
|
