NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced today that
four migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under the
Trump administration will be reunited in the U.S. this week - the
first to be reunited through President Biden's family reunification
task force, Joel Rose reports for NPR News
. 

Michelle Brané, executive director of the task force, "said more than
1,000 families have yet to be reunited, although incomplete
record-keeping by the Trump administration has made it difficult to give
a precise number." 

Nevertheless, our outdated policies continue to push migrants into
dangerous situations. At least four people have died and two dozen
have been hospitalized after an overcrowded boat being used to smuggle
migrants broke apart on a reef off the coast of San Diego on Sunday
morning, Neil Vigdor and Marie Fazio report for The New York Times
.  

"The smugglers don't really care about the people they're
exploiting," Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Jeffery
Stephenson told The San Diego Union-Tribune
. "All
they care about is profit. To them, these people are just
commodities." 

Welcome to Monday's edition of Noorani's Notes. Today is the
last day to register for our Thursday event
 with the George W. Bush
Institute and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, "

**Immigrants and the American Future: A conversation with President
George W. Bush, Dr. Russell Moore, and Yuval Levin**."  

If you have a story to share from your own community, please
send it to me at [email protected]
.    

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**BORDER OPPORTUNITY **- "While there are no quick fixes to the
problems we face, the humanitarian crisis at the border presents an
opportunity for political coalition-building like never before,"
writes Douglas Baker, former special assistant and senior director for
border security and transportation security to President George W.
Bush (and a member of the Council on National Security and Immigration
) in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner
. Baker
makes the case that recent legislation introduced by
Sens. Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sinema (D-Arizona), the Bipartisan Border
Solutions Act, is a "good start" for meaningful bipartisan reform.
"Families and unaccompanied children seeking asylum at the border do
not pose a national security threat to the U.S..," he
concludes. "Let's treat them with the dignity they deserve." 

**TITLE 42** - The Associated Press
 reports
that some 400 migrants expelled from the U.S. are now camped out in
a plaza in the dangerous Mexican border city of Reynosa, per the aid
group Doctors Without Borders. "In normal times, migrants are returned
to Mexico under bilateral agreements that limit deportations to daylight
hours and the largest crossings," the AP notes. "But under pandemic
authority, Mexicans and citizens of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras
can be expelled to Mexico throughout the night and in smaller
towns." BuzzFeed News
'
Hamed Aleaziz reports that Biden officials "are considering a process
to allow some 'vulnerable' immigrants to avoid Trump-era border
restrictions."  

**BORDER REPAIRS** - In South Texas, Border Report's
Sandra
Sanchez writes that Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez plans
to "mobilize county resources to fix the breaches in the levee system"
caused by border wall construction - with or without approval from
the federal government, per an unnamed source. U.S. Army Corps
Engineers officials told Cortez "they are not able to make repairs to
the four giant breaks in the earthen border levee unless authorized by
the Department of Homeland Security." Rep. Vicente
Gonzalez (D-Texas) told Border Report: "It would be a lot easier if
[DHS] put forth the effort to get the contractors out there. It's
just a bunch of mud and dirt that needs to fill in those gaps and we
need to get it done before hurricane season." 

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**ARIZONA FARMWORKERS** - From November through April, thousands
of farmworkers living in Mexico - some with guest worker visas,
some U.S. citizens or permanent residents who choose to live in
Mexico for economic or family reasons - wait hours each day to
pass through a congested border crossing on their way to pick produce in
Yuma County, Arizona. This past year, Esther Honig writes for The
Food and Environment Reporting Network
, "the
pandemic turned an already difficult commute into a hazardous and
potentially deadly endeavor." While the commuters make up around a
quarter of the farmworkers supporting Yuma County's $3 billion
agriculture industry, as of April neither the county nor the state had
issued mandates or guidelines for protecting farmworkers. "I understand
the issue; it's crystal clear to me, and I do everything in my power
that I can," said John Schwamm, the CBP area port director for the
crossing. "But the problem is infrastructure." 

**INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS **- The National Foundation for American
Policy's Stuart Anderson speaks to Kenneth Reade, director of
international student and scholar services at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst; and Dan Berger, a partner at Curran, Berger &
Kludt; about the challenges international students face
in obtaining student visas amid the COVID-19 pandemic in his latest
piece for Forbes
. While
the State Department just issued updated guidance
 for
students in all countries with COVID-19 travel bans, "most countries
in the world are now under a travel advisory, meaning travel for a visa
appointment is uncertain," Berger explains. "We still do not have clear
guidance about how the travel bans apply to the spouses and children of
students or more generally for scholars and staff." 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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