|
ATDs — DHS on Tuesday announced the implementation of a new program that "relies on help from nonprofits to track and offer more assistance" to migrants in the agency’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, reports Sandra Sanchez of the Border Report. The ATD Case Management Pilot Program will add to current ATD programs and expand services to "provide voluntary case management and other counseling services to noncitizens who are in immigration removal proceedings to ensure they have access to legal aid and other necessary services to make their claims to remain in the United States," Sanchez writes. "It remains to be seen just how this new Alternatives to Detention approach will work in practice, but it could be a step in the right direction," said Austin Kocher, a researcher with Syracuse University’s Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). HAITI — Members of Congress, Haitian Americans and other advocates are calling on the Biden administration to extend Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) eligibility deadline and stop deportations following Saturday’s devastating earthquake, Alex Daugherty reports for the Miami Herald. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas most recently expanded TPS for Haitians on Aug. 3 following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. It’s currently available for Haitians living in the U.S. as of July 29 and is in place until Feb. 3, 2023. Tessa Petit, the Florida Immigrant Coalition’s director of operations, told Daugherty that expanding TPS is the least the administration can do: "Now more than ever it will be impossible to return them to a country that will not be able to give them support and is unsafe for them."
‘BUREAUCRATIC LIMBO’ — 18-year-old Antonio was one of the first migrants to be arrested under Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) order to lock up migrants accused of trespassing at the southern border. And after prosecutors realized state police had separated him from his father against orders to make the arrest, he also became one of the first migrants to be released — but because Abbott’s order directs authorities to arrest migrants on state criminal charges rather than referring them to federal immigration authorities, Antonio was left in "bureaucratic limbo" living at the home of his court-appointed attorney, Jolie McCullough reports in The Texas Tribune. "Once Antonio was out of the prison, it quickly became clear that local, state and federal officials had no idea what to do with him," McCullough writes. Said Kate Huddleston, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas: "What we see here is the state interfering in that [immigration enforcement] process … that now makes it difficult for someone seeking asylum to go through the process as intended and move quickly out of the border region."
|
