Dear Friends,

• There has been a big shift proposed in the US' safe third country policy in the last month. Until recently, the only country that was considered a safe third country for asylum seekers was Canada, meaning that if an asylum seeker passed through Canada en route to seeking asylum in the US, then we could remove them to Canada to seek asylum there. The standard under US law for evaluating whether a country could be "safe" is: they must be with countries where an immigrant’s “life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” and where they would have “access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection.” This month, the Trump administration announced that they would be signing safe third country agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras-- the very nations that the vast majority of asylum seekers to the US are fleeing. There is ample evidence that these Northern Triangle countries and Mexico are dangerous to migrants (El Salvador has the highest murder rate in the world) and that they do not have access to full and fair procedures to claim asylum. These agreements will all but guarantee that vulnerable migrants would be deported to their deaths. Vox.com has an excellent summary of this issue on their website. 
• Additionally, the Trump administration, with support from the Supreme Court, has also declared that people who cross Mexico and do not seek asylum there will no longer be eligible for asylum. This is confusing because asylum isn't the only protection possible. If someone crossed Mexico and entered the US after 7/15/2019 and applies for political asylum, asylum will be denied. But they have the option to apply for two different forms of protection: Withholding of Removal and the Convention Against Torture. This means that when people actually endure the excruciating and dangerous process of getting to US asylum court, the face much more difficult standards to prove that they are eligible. This interview in the New Yorker with an ACLU lawyer serves as a really good explanation.
• The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) otherwise known as Remain in Mexico (or if you travel in our circles, the Migrant Persecution Protocols) is the process of turning asylum seekers around at the US border to wait in Mexico for a hearing date in the United States. When the date comes they are invited to come to the bridge to the US where they will be detained and brought to court for a mass hearing with hundreds of other asylum seekers and then sent back to Mexico to wait for the next hearing. This has been happening in Tijuana for the last 9 months and in Juarez since April and has now expanded to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. It is an astonishingly dangerous policy that exposes migrant families who attempt to wait for their hearings to unspeakably dangerous risk. An estimated 50,000 people have been put in this program. The always excellent Intercept published this piece about the MPP policy. This is a must read. 
• Earlier in the summer, the Trump administration promulgated new Public Charge regulations for people seeking green cards in the United States. Public Charge isn't a new concept. It is the idea that we should deny visas to people who are likely going to need gov't assistance when they are living legally in the US. The past three presidential administrations have largely used the use of emergency cash assistance as a way to determine if someone is likely to become a public charge. The Trump administration changed those regulations so that potential immigrants would now be evaluated much more strictly, including whether their citizen children had used means tested benefits such as medicaid or food stamps. The announcement of this policy, which was set to go into effect October 15th, has caused immigrant families all over the country to stop seeking benefits for their children out of fear of the Trump Administration. On October 11, 3 Federal Judges enjoined the rule calling it "repugnant to the American Dream".  Now the rule and the immigrants whose future green cards may depend on it, are in limbo. As usual, NPR has good coverage.
• The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the issue of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on November 12th. If you need a refresher of how we got here, the National Immigration Law Center has a great timeline. The actual merits of what is being argued has a lot to do with administrative procedure and whether the government's decision to end DACA abruptly in 2017 was lawful. This case matters, of course, because of the 800,000 Dreamers in our country who have built lives and made meaningful decisions based on their permission to work and live in this country. If you want a deeper understanding about what is at stake, please check out United We Dream's amicus brief and 27 video stories of Dreamers at their powerful Home is Here campaign. A decision will not arrive until the summer of 2020 and it is important to point out, there is nothing stopping our Congress from passing laws that protect Dreamers and the entire immigrant community ahead of the Court's ruling.
• On October 4, 2019, President Trump released the "Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Will Financially Burden the US Health Care System". In a nutshell this proclamation says that people who are applying for immigrant visas (green cards) will be denied unless they can prove they are insured or affluent enough to cover medical costs. Here is a great explainer, again, from vox.com, which estimates that this rule, which is actually a very big deal, could restrict legal immigration by 65%. This proclamation, along with the public charge rule, attempts to slam America's doors on financially vulnerable immigrants destroying our traditions of welcoming the  tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free. As with most of Trump's executive actions, litigation is expected to challenge the new rule. 
• The Governor of California signed a bill into law on October 11 that bans private prison and detention contracts after Jan 1, 2020. This includes 4 ICE facilities that total 4,500 beds. When the detention centers lose their contracts, ICE will be forced to transfer detainees to other states. Here is a more in depth explanation from the Guardian. This is a major piece of legislation that undermines profit motive for detention expansion and provides other states a template (ahem, New Mexico and Governer Lujan Grisham) to do the same. 
• Grassroots organizations have effectively pressured all the major banks to cut ties with private prison corporation giant Geo Group and most major banks to cut ties with CoreCivic. As their contracts expire this will represent a 87% financial short fall as these corporations lose access to loans and lines of credit. As a result these corporations are receiving negative credit ratings and under performing significantly for investors. This Forbes article lays the issue out nicely. Also make sure to keep in touch with the divestment issue in NM at SFDP's prison divestment website. 
• The Trump administration dropped the refugee cap to 18,000 in September. This is the lowest number of refugees that will be let into the US since the program started in 1980. It is important to remember that in this context, refugees are different than asylum seekers. These are people that have been identified as refugees overseas and vetted for national security issues and welcomed into our country through a resettlement program. This is an 80 percent decline since the Obama Administrations high water mark of a 110,000 person refugee cap. Public Radio International has a good summary of the effect. 
• Here are a few excellent articles that we read in the last month for some deeper learning about these issues:
  • How the US Built the World's Largest Detention Center in The Guardian
  • How the US Asylum System is Keeping Migrants at Risk in Mexico in The New Yorker
  • The New York Times provides a behind the scenes look at policy making in Shoot Migrant's Legs, Build Alligator Moat: Behind Trump's Ideas for Border. 

• One piece of incredible news: through the persistence of our legal director Wes Brockway and the fortitude of his client, our longest detained client was finally granted relief in the United States under the Convention Against Torture after nearly two and half years in detention. It took several trials and two appeals to the Bureau of Immigration Appeals but they were successful. So much gratitude for their bravery! 
• Safe Place, a weekly community legal clinic helping asylum seekers is in full swing. We already have 50 families participating in the program as we continue to discover their needs and figure out how to best engage with them and serve them in the enormous task of preparing an asylum case for the El Paso Court. Thank you so much to the Santa Fe Community Foundation, the Santa Fe Neighborhood Law Center, and Santa Fe 100 Women Who Care for their support in helping us start this program.
• We are also excited because our bilingual counseling program, led by the amazing and newly minted LMCH Isabel Ribe and funded by St. Vincents Anchorum grant, is also in full swing. Not only do our clients now have an in-house resource to help with their needs surrounding trauma, Isabel is also supporting asylum seekers at our clinic, doing community outreach with the schools, and fortifying relationships with other mental health service providers in Santa Fe. We are so excited to see this program grow and beyond grateful for Isabel's expertise. 
• We are proud to announce that we received a major grant from the Arcus Foundation to support our work with trans asylum seekers. It will allow us to hire another attorney for our defense team, who we are in the final stages of hiring!
• We are finishing up a major renovation of the RV, Dreams on Wheels. She is finally going to be as beautiful on the inside as she is outside and be fully functional as a mobile law office. We have a small list of inexpensive donations we need to make it perfect  so we made a baby registry... stay tuned for her big unveiling later this month before she rolls to her first event on November 5. 
• We want to give a big shout out to our Community Programs team who, in anticipation of the Public Charge rule going into affect filed 22 green card applications in 2 weeks. This is an amazing accomplishment. 
• We applaud Staff Attorney Hector Ruiz who did a congressional briefing in Washington DC following up on a complaint that our organization submitted along with several organizations alleging major violations by ICE in their care of LGBTQI individuals and people living with HIV. You can read the Washington Post article about that complaint here. 
• A huge congratulations to Hali Calzadillas and Tess Kursel who are both now accredited by the Department of Justice to represent clients at Santa Fe Dreamers Project. This is not an easy accreditation to earn and it drastically expands our abilities to serve our clients. 
• Our new collaborative program in El Paso, EPIC, is in full swing. Starting this project has been a challenge to say the least, even with our incredible staff and partners. We have done over 480 intakes and finally on October 11, our team helped release the first person, a young Cuban man who is now free to request political asylum with friends and family. He will not be detained indefinitely in Otero County in Southern NM awaiting a hearing with one of the country's most dangerous immigration judges. It usually doesn't take 2 months and 8 organizations and 5 staff and countless volunteers to release one person. But there are around 4,000 people detained in this region. Doing it the usual way will do nothing to change the system or help the entire volume of people who need a lawyer to represent them. EPIC is about inventing a new system with many hands that can crowd-source that need to reach thousands of people at once and collect the information that we need to confront the evil and unjust practices we see everyday in these spaces. We have spent nearly every day of the last two months creating, designing, and tweaking this system and we are far from finished. But we are psyched to celebrate the joy of this one man being released from prison as a sign of hope that trying something new and working as a collective with love and rigor can create real change that supports true justice for immigrants and asylum seekers. Check out EPIC at our website: www.elpasojuntos.org to sign up for our newsletter, learn about volunteering, or make a donation.