There were nearly 40,000 arrests along the southern border this month, the lowest this fiscal year. But the number of total apprehensions — more than 850,000 — is the highest of any year since 2007.

“Historically, apprehension numbers have risen in the spring and dropped in the fall and winter. However, in recent years, there have been severe lows and highs, not fitting into a seasonal pattern,” Geneva Sands writes in CNN.

There’s two reasons this is not surprising.

One, as Randy Capps wrote in Foreign Affairs in June: The president’s rhetoric provided the cartels with a sales pitch to entice large numbers of Central Americans fleeing violence, poverty and corruption to try and seek asylum in the U.S. This was a problem the president created.

Two, in an op-ed for The New York Times: Univision’s Jorge Ramos lays blame at the feet of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, writing that “Mexico may not have paid for the president’s wall, but the country has, in effect, become Mr. Trump’s immigration police force. Mexico itself has become the wall.”
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes.

Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

HEALTHCARE WALL – President Trump issued a proclamation last week that would deny visas to immigrants who cannot prove they could cover their own medical expenses or obtain health insurance, writes Claire Hansen in U.S. News and World Report. “The rule may bar some 65% of would-be green card holders, an analysis by the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute found.” More evidence of cuts to legal immigration by the administration.

NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE – The Kansas City area has relied on immigrant labor to fuel its agribusinesses since the late 1800s, Vicky Diaz-Camacho and Cody Boston write in Flatland. Most of the immigrants come on H-2A temporary worker visas, but the U.S. Department of Labor recently revised how the visas are regulated, which could make it harder to find workers. But “the general consensus among farmers, economists, attorneys and health experts is that restricting visas and denying work to immigrant laborers who live in the U.S. would be detrimental for rural farms in Kansas and Missouri.”

ICE LETTER – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is under scrutiny after Albert Carter, director of enforcement and removal operations, released an open letter defending the agency’s immigration practices, Daniel Gonzalez reports for the Arizona Republic. The letter claims that the agency does not target individuals indiscriminately, and instead the agency focuses on those who pose the greatest threat to public safety. Yet the data, analyzed by the American Immigration Council, tells a different story: “ICE now treats all infractions equally, resulting in the arrests of more immigrants for simple traffic offenses and no other criminal record” — a contributing factor explaining why ICE arrests “jumped 44% from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2018.”
CANADIAN VALUES – Canadian business owner Jim Estill has helped over 300 Syrian refugees resettle in Ontario, David Silverberg reports in BBC News. Estill’s efforts include being a sponsor, using his own money to fly families to Canada, providing jobs at his company and more. In March, Estill was awarded the Order of Canada, the country’s second-highest honor. As he put it, these families “want a future without fear and violence. And we should be welcoming them, since 99.9% of Canadians are immigrants in some way too.”
“THE FACES OF FAMILY SEPARATION” – CBS News has created a heart-wrenching documentary showing the real-life impact that family separation has on children whose parents were ripped from them. “The documentary provides an immersive look at the hotly debated issue through the eyes of those impacted the most — the fathers, mothers, sons and daughters separated and unaware when they’ll see their family members again.”
MARRIAGE TRAP – Six couples have joined a class action lawsuit against federal agents, saying the officials used marriage interviews as a trap to deport immigrant spouses, Regina Garcia Cano reports for the Associated Press. Highlighting the case of Alyse and Elmer Sanchez, Cano writes that “Federal regulations allow U.S. citizens like Alyse to try to legalize the status of spouses like Elmer, who has been living in the country illegally. … But the American Civil Liberties Union says a growing number of officers have ‘cruelly twisted’ the rules by detaining immigrant spouses following marriage interviews.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali