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ROOT CAUSES — The Biden administration has published their strategy to address the root causes of migration in Central America, along with a fact sheet and readout of their background press briefing. My take: Addressing root causes of Central American migration is critical to securing our border and treating migrants with dignity. This is a complicated problem that requires a long-term, multilateral commitment to solutions. RELEASED — Some 50,000 migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border unauthorized have now been released in the U.S. without a court date, reports Stef W. Kight of Axios. Instead, migrants have been "given a list of addresses and contacts for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] offices across the country and told to report to one of them." About a third of the migrants have yet to check in and have passed the 60-day reporting window they were given, notes Kight. Regardless, "it's unprecedented for agents to release migrants without an official notice to appear in court." MIGRANT CHILDREN — According to a new whistleblower complaint filed Wednesday — the second one from the Fort Bliss shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in less than a month — children were held in overcrowded conditions without adequate masks, resulting in a COVID-19 outbreak, report Adolfo Flores and Hamed Aleaziz of BuzzFeed News. "Gross mismanagement, waste, and abuse of authority by those at the top who insisted on utmost secrecy led to conditions for thousands of children at Fort Bliss that can only be described as constituting mistreatment," said one of the whistleblowers, Arthur Pearlstein, who was part of the mental health team at Fort Bliss.
DEPORTATION CASES — Under new Biden administration guidance announced in May, more than 100,000 immigrants who pose little threat to public safety could have their deportation cases dropped — but only at the discretion of prosecutors, reports Dara Lind of ProPublica. A ProPublica survey of more than a dozen lawyers across the country, in addition to a review of documents from local Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, "shows that implementation of that guidance has been spotty, with many prosecutors proceeding with exactly the sorts of deportation cases the new rules are intended to prevent. … With no way to understand the rulings or ask for a review, immigrants and their lawyers say, the program can look a lot like arbitrariness." Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is slated to provide final guidance in August or
September, but until then, deportation orders continue. LOST GREEN CARDS? — "Without drastic revisions in the glacial processing times, President Biden will have presided over one of the largest cuts to legal immigration in U.S. history," Cato Institute research fellow David J. Bier writes in an op-ed for The Washington Post. The Biden administration "has processed green card applications at such a slow pace that it will come at least 100,000 slots short of using up the annual limit," Bier points out, noting that if these additional slots aren’t used by end of this fiscal year in September, they’re gone forever. "Unless there is a change of heart soon, Biden will assume responsibility for denying thousands of immigrants the path to citizenship that Congress promised them." Thanks for reading, |
