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].

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.

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