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RECONCILIATION — On Tuesday, Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Illinois) said he will support a budget reconciliation package "only if it includes provisions to grant a pathway to citizenship to a broad spectrum of the country's undocumented population," reports Rafael Bernal of The Hill. "A robust and equitable budget reconciliation deal must include a pathway to citizenship for immigrants — our country can’t make a full recovery without it, and I can’t support any deal that leaves so many people in my district behind," García said in a statement. While other Democrats have voiced support for including immigration provisions in the reconciliation bill, Bernal notes that García is the first Democrat to publicly make an official statement about the package. BIPARTISANSHIP — "I believe Texas has a unique role to play in showing the rest of the country how important it is to both uphold our laws and welcome immigrants," writes Laura Collins, director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative, in a Houston Chronicle op-ed. While states can’t dictate federal immigration policies, she writes, they can still play a role in "shaping decisions, working with the federal government so that policies reflect the daily reality of residents whose lives exist on both sides of the border. And we can use our voices to show the rest of the United States the benefits of immigration." Over in Utah, American Business Immigration Coalition co-chair and former Arizona state Sen. Bob Worsley joins Utah State University President Noelle Cockett to call on Utah’s Republican senators, Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, to support bipartisan immigration solutions. "Without public and aggressive leadership from Romney and Lee[,] real immigration reform may elude us yet again," they write in an op-ed for The Salt Lake Tribune. YEMEN — The Biden administration has extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Yemenis through March 2023, citing ongoing war, humanitarian conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, Al Jazeera reports. The 18-month extension will allow about 1,700 current Yemeni TPS holders to retain their status and allow an estimated 480 additional Yemenis to apply, per a Department of Homeland Security statement. While the extension allows Yemeni TPS holders to continue living and working in the U.S. without fear of deportation, it does not grant them any permanent solutions like a path to citizenship.
COVID CASES — COVID-19 cases are increasing at crowded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers as their populations "swell nearly to prepandemic levels," Maura Turcotte reports for The New York Times. Per ICE data, the number of people in immigration detention has grown from about 14,000 in April to more than 26,000 last week, and more than 7,500 new coronavirus cases have been reported over that same period — accounting for more than 40% of all cases reported in ICE facilities since the pandemic began. "You have people coming in and out of the facility, into communities where incomplete vaccination allows these variants to flourish, and then you bring them inside the facilities, and that variant will spread," said Sharon Dolovich, a law professor and director of UCLA’s Covid Behind Bars Data Project. SHELTERS — The Biden administration is calling a Pomona, California, facility a model for other large-scale shelters for unaccompanied migrant children, Amy Taxin and Julie Watson of the Associated Press report. "It is not easy to stand something up like this quickly, and do it right, but I think you can see that this is a place where kids can be healthy and safe," said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, who gave elected officials and two AP journalists a tour of the site on Friday. With access to family phone calls, twice-weekly classes and green spaces, the site "is definitely not Fort Bliss," as Karina Ramos of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in California put it. Per HHS, the average stay at temporary shelters was 37 days as of this week, with the number of children in the agency’s care dropping from a high of more than 22,000 earlier this year to just over 14,400. BORDER PATTERNS — New data show that the paths of tens of thousands of migrants from all over the world are diverging at the U.S.-Mexico border — and the diverging routes "are part of a migration pattern that U.S. officials say they have never seen to this degree," Nick Miroff of The Washington Post reports. While social media and word-of-mouth can influence where migrants cross, Miroff notes, "smuggling organizations are taking advantage of uneven enforcement policies to convert sections of the U.S. border into designated entry lanes for specific nationalities and demographic groups." Thanks for reading, Ali |
