Wednesday, August 25
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

Last night, the Supreme Court declined the Biden administration's
request  to
stay a lower court order requiring the revival of the
Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols
 (MPP), aka "Remain
in Mexico," a program that requires certain migrants seeking asylum at
the U.S.-Mexico border to return to Mexico and wait near the border for
the duration of their immigration proceedings. 

The Biden administration suspended the program shortly after taking
office, but Texas and Missouri sued to reinstate it in
April. The Supreme Court decision "said the Biden administration
had failed to show that it was likely to defeat the claim that the
termination of the program was arbitrary and
capricious," reports Tierney Sneed of CNN
.  

In a petition filed with the Court, the administration said the lower
court mandate to abruptly reimpose and maintain the program "would
prejudice the United States' relations with vital regional partners,
severely disrupt its operations at the southern border, and threaten to
create a diplomatic and humanitarian crisis," Sneed notes.  

This decision will have dire humanitarian consequences. Migrants
expelled under MPP faced
 extremely
dangerous conditions, a lack of access to counsel or due process,
and serious difficulty returning to the U.S. for their court
dates. And conditions remain dangerous: Since the start of the Biden
administration, Human Rights First
 has
recorded more than 6,000 attacks against migrants who were turned away
at the border.  

Reinstating MPP will not lead to a more orderly asylum process or a
safer border. Instead, if it is reinstated
fully, we will see more suffering and confusion for vulnerable
people seeking safety.  

Ian Millhiser at Vox
 has
a great explainer on what last night's decision means. For more
context, the Forum also has an in-depth MPP explainer
.  

Welcome to Wednesday's edition of Noorani's Notes. I'm
Joanna Taylor, communications manager at the Forum, filling in for Ali
today. If you have a story to share from your own community, please
send it to me at [email protected]
. 

[link removed]

A quick ICYMI before we dive in: We hosted a press call
 yesterday
with a national security expert and Afghanistan veteran, refugee
resettlement leaders and a policy expert to discuss what the U.S. must
do to improve the evacuation of Afghan allies, and underscore the
humanitarian and national security imperatives for immediate action. 

AFGHAN DEADLINE - Despite pressure for an extension from G7 leaders
and advocates, President Biden said Tuesday he'd maintain the Aug.
31 deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, a team at CNN
 reports. While
the Pentagon says it plans to evacuate all remaining Americans in the
country by next week, the fate of thousands of Afghan allies is less
clear. "Damn the deadline," Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) said before
Biden announced his decision, per NBC News
.
"Americans want us to stay until we get our people out, and so do our
allies. ... Mr. President, tell the Taliban we're getting our people out
however long it takes and that we're perfectly willing to spill Taliban,
Al Qaeda and ISIS blood to do it." Meanwhile, DHS announced Tuesday
that it would offer some Afghan evacuees humanitarian parole, following
a rigorous security check, to enter the U.S. while they wait for their
Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applications to be processed, Morgan
Chalfant and Rebecca Beitsch report for The Hill
.  

NONGOVERNMENT NETWORK - Without a clear plan from the
administration, a "network of veterans, private sector workers, human
rights activists and other volunteers" are working desperately to
evacuate friends and family from Afghanistan. In an op-ed for The
New York Times
, Los Angeles-based
community organizer Arash Azizzada details some of these
efforts: "We're figuring out what Taliban checkpoints to avoid and
what gate at the airport is the most accessible, if any are. We're
raising money, millions of dollars overnight, to charter planes. We're
endlessly compiling spreadsheets with information about Afghans who are
under threat from the Taliban. We're doing this because the American
government isn't."  

[link removed]

DEADLY CROSSING - An increase in migration to the U.S.-Mexico
border comes with a grim counterpart: an increase in deaths in the
desert. For The New York Times
,
Simon Romero talks to Sheriff Oscar E. Carrillo in West Texas'
Culberson County, who has found the bodies of 19 migrants this year
alone. "I used to request regular stuff like bulletproof vests," said
Carillo, whose 10-person department is overwhelmed trying to identify
victims and locate their families. "Now I'm asking for more body
bags." As of July, Border Patrol officials alone had found 383
migrants dead this fiscal year - the highest number in almost a
decade. "'All these bodies are deserving of an
investigation,' [Carillo] said, calling the dead
migrants 'esta pobre gente inocente' - poor innocent
people." 

RACIST ORIGINS - In a "momentous judicial acknowledgment of the
plainly racist and nativist underpinnings of laws," U.S. District
Judge Miranda Du recently ruled that a law criminalizing re-entry to
the U.S. after deportation "is unconstitutional because it's
explicitly racist in its origins," Hassan Kanu writes in an opinion
column for Reuters
. Judge
Du's ruling is "a rare admission by the courts that foundational
elements of the federal immigration machinery - enforcement
processes we now take for granted - actually clash with
constitutional equal protection guarantees," Kanu writes. For NBC
News
,
Char Adams spoke with Black immigrants about how disparities in the
immigration system impact their lives: "Black immigrants are
constantly profiled," said Yoliswa Cele, UndocuBlack's national
director of narrative and media. "... Black immigrants also have the
highest visa denial rates. Black immigrants are more likely, when they
are detained, to be put in solitary confinement. We bear the brunt of
all the consequences that happen, all the xenophobia in this country." 

Thanks for reading,

Joanna

 

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