NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

 Let's start with a long read.  

For The Nation
,
Ashoka Mukpo digs deep into the story of Guatemalan-born Bastian
Rodriguez, who as a young teen received a juvenile detention
sentence - which for Rodriguez, who came to the U.S. as a child, led
to him spending much of his teenage years in U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after serving his initial sentence.

He's "one of a still-unknown number of teenagers" who have been
placed by ICE in facilities "that are often thousands of miles away
from their families, and where there are no safeguards in place to
guarantee that they were represented in court for the months-and in
some cases, years-of their detention." 

This is a story about an immigration enforcement system that assumes
guilt, our nation's belief that immigrant kids do not deserve a second
chance, and the importance of activism. No easy answers here.  

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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**IN THE OVAL** - Later today, President Biden plans to meet with
six DACA recipients to highlight his administration's  immigration
priorities, reports Mike Memoli of NBC News.
The meeting "underscore[s]
the administration's argument for enshrining that executive action
into law, highlighting essential workers in fields like education,
agriculture and health care." One of the DACA recipients, Esmeralda
Tovar-Mora, has been featured twice on our podcast
. Look,
while today's meeting is an important step forward, we think the next
immigration meeting in the Oval should be a bipartisan group of Senators
hashing out a compromise.  

**HEARINGS** - Homeland Security leadership was on the Hill
yesterday for a full day of hearings, with DHS Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas defending the Biden administration's approach to the
situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, Quinn Owen reports for ABC News
. "What
we did was deploy experts in the vetting of individuals with respect to
their identity and their qualifications, we took asylum and refugee
officers who deal with these very issues in the hottest spots around
the world, and apply their technical expertise and experience to the
vetting of the sponsors," said Mayorkas. Meanwhile,
Camilo Montoya-Galvez and Nicole Sganga at CBS News
 add
that "several Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns that the
continued use of Title 42 results in the voluntary separation of
families." 

**BORDER FLIGHTS** - Amid legal scrutiny and public health concerns
from advocates, the government "has stopped flying migrant families
with children hundreds of miles across southern border states for the
purpose of expelling them to Mexico," reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez
of CBS News
.
U.S. officials had been transporting Central American families to El
Paso and San Diego for months to "circumvent the Mexican government's
refusal to accept Central American families with young children in the
state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas' Rio Grande Valley, the busiest
sector for unlawful crossings." Although the flights have
stopped, Montoya-Galvez notes that families can still be expelled
without a chance to seek asylum.  

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**THE THOMPSONS** - Laura Benshoff of NPR News
 tells
the story of Clive and Oneita Thompson, a couple with long-standing
roots in New Jersey, who sought sanctuary in
Pennsylvania churches for more than two years to avoid deportation
to Jamaica. About five months ago, ICE finally allowed the
Thompsons to begin the process of obtaining green cards. Still,
restarting life after years in sanctuary has not been easy: "All
our opportunity was taken away," Clive said. "How are we going to start
life back over again? It was like a puzzle." Though ICE supports their
path to a permanent residency now, the Thompsons still have to wait
for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to officially grant
them work authorization and green cards - processes that can
take months and years, respectively.  

**'CREATE A LINE'** - Inconsistent policies and enforcement
from the U.S. and Mexican governments have "made the situation at
the border so confusing that even seasoned experts can't always
determine who is allowed in and who isn't," reports
Lomi Kriel for The Texas Tribune
and ProPublica. Entrance
to the U.S. is "based on a variety of factors, including where
[migrants] cross and the age of their children," experts said, and
smugglers "have exploited the confusion to manipulate vulnerable
migrants into making the journey north, adding to the sustained influx
at the border." Ultimately, the challenges at the border "are driven
by the inability of Congress to significantly reform the immigration
system over the past three decades." Said Andrew Selee, president of
the Migration Policy Institute : "If
you create a line that you can actually get into, over time it changes
people's options." 

**MARK YOUR CALENDAR** - This year, Zócalo Public Square is
presenting its 11th Annual Book Prize
 to New
York Times journalist Jia Lynn Yang for her book, One Mighty and
Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration,
1924-1965. This is one of the best books I've read over the last
year (and I was lucky enough to speak to Jia Lynn about it for Only in
America
). Yang will
be interviewed by Stanford University sociologist Tomás Jiménez in
a free, live event open to the public - set a reminder for May
20 at 5 p.m. PT to hear them discuss a central question: "Does
America Really Want To Be A Nation Of Immigrants?" Register for the
event here
.  

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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