NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

On Tuesday the Biden administration announced the nomination
of Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, Texas, to lead U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Nicole Hensley and St. John
Barned-Smith report for the Houston Chronicle
.  

As Hamed Aleaziz at BuzzFeed News
 notes,
"Gonzalez gained a national profile as the leader of one of the largest
sheriff's departments in the country, particularly during the response
to Hurricane Harvey. In recent years, he has also used his position in
law enforcement to push back against Trump's immigration policies." 

Gonzalez's fellow Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force
 co-chairs pointed to
his track record as "an encouraging indication of how he would run ICE
- with a balance of security and compassion that makes everyone safer.
We encourage the Senate to quickly confirm him." 

Our take: This is an excellent choice.
 

Welcome to Wednesday'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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**14 vs. 40** - Emily Ekins of the Cato Institute, one of the
smartest in the business, along with David Kemp (who I'm sure is
pretty smart as well) are out with the Cato Institute 2021
Immigration and National Identity Survey
.
TBH I'm still sifting through it, but had to pass this along: "The
survey found that Americans estimate that immigrants comprise about 40%
of the U.S. population. This is notable because the actual share
 of
foreign born is about 14%." Folks, we aren't having a political
debate about immigration - we're having a cultural one.  

**JOINT SESSION** - President Biden's speech this evening to a
joint session of Congress will include a pledge to tackle immigration,
reports The Washington Post
's Marianna
Sotomayor. While the president will signal support for a targeted
approach, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) maintains
that any immigration deal with Republican support must address the
situation at the border, The Hill
's
Jordain Carney reports. As former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza
Rice told George W. Bush Institute Executive Director Holly
Kuzmich in an interview
 earlier
this month: "Immigration is still America's secret weapon and why it has
been the country that it has been."  

**COURTHOUSE GUIDANCE** - The Biden administration is issuing a
policy "that sharply limits the immigrants whom ICE officers can arrest
at courthouses after years of criticism of the practice," BuzzFeed
's
Hamed Aleaziz reports. The new guidance under the Department of
Homeland Security also applies to U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP)'s civil enforcement actions. "As law enforcement
officers and public servants, we have a special responsibility to ensure
that access to the courthouse - and therefore access to justice,
safety for crime victims, and equal protections under the law - is
preserved," the policy reads. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called
the new guidance "the latest step in our efforts to focus our civil
immigration enforcement resources on threats to homeland security and
public safety." 

**SHELTERS** - The Biden administration "is seeking to enlist
state-licensed shelter and foster care providers that typically serve
local child welfare systems to help provide temporary housing for
thousands of unaccompanied migrant children," Caitlin Dickson reports
for Yahoo News
. "[W]e're looking
at potential capacity to serve approximately 3,000 children, and I'd
say at least a third of that has been identified with potential foster
family homes," said Lisette Burton, chief policy and practice adviser at
the Association of Children's Residential Centers. "While this is
certainly in response to the urgent need, I think there is interest,
opportunity and an eye toward building a stronger unaccompanied-children
program for the long term." As NPR
's
Kirk Siegler reports, much of the humanitarian relief along the border
is coming from volunteer aid groups given amid an absence of federal
funding.  

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**MPP UNWIND **- An underreported Biden administration success:
Its efforts to unwind the Trump-era Migrant Protection
Protocols (MPP), a.k.a. "Remain in Mexico." Andrea Flores, national
director for transborder security at the White House, told reporters
that 8,100 asylum seekers previously detained in Mexico under MPP have
been processed into the U.S. since February 19, and more are being
admitted every week, Mark Wingfield reports for Baptist New Global
. "The
wind-down of MPP is a model of the fair and orderly migrant processing
the Biden administration is building on the southwest border," Flores
said.  

**MIGRATION AS A SOLUTION** - Greg Sargent writes in a Washington
Post
 column
about how new data from the Census Bureau underscores the demographic
challenges facing the nation - and why immigration is a critical part
of the solution. Sargent notes that the U.S. population "grew more
slowly in the last decade than at any other time except the
1930s," yet "[t]ens of thousands of people each month are pounding at
our doors, begging us to let them in, most harboring nothing more than a
desire to participate constructively in our largely successful political
and economic order. And we go to extraordinary lengths to turn them
away." The key takeaway here: "We need to reorient our whole debate
toward the general guiding idea of more migration as a solution, as
a good outcome that could supplant much worse
outcomes." These demographic challenges - and the ways immigration
could address them - are the focus of a February paper
 from
myself and my colleague Danilo Zak.  

**LATINO COUNT** - After warnings of a potential undercount of
the Latino population in the 2020 census, Texas, Florida and
Arizona made smaller than expected gains in House seats, report
Zach Montellaro and Ally Mutnick for Politico
. After
early estimates that the three states would gain as many as six
additional House seats combined, "official apportionment numbers
released Monday sent only three new seats to those three states - two
in Texas, one in Florida and, perhaps most surprisingly, none in Arizona
- shocking members of both parties and raising concerns among Latino
politicians and activists that the Census Bureau, despite years of
warnings and advocacy, undercounted their communities in those heavily
Latino states." Said Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-California): "An
undercount means that there's less money for the kids in your
neighborhood, there's less money coming your way for the seniors who
need support in your neighborhood. That is the ultimate cost to a
community." 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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