Thursday, October 21
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

The Justice Department is eliminating case quotas for immigration
judges, which "became a point of contention during the Trump
administration for undercutting judges' authority and
discretion," reports Priscilla Alvarez of CNN
. "Judges
argued that the quotas valued expediency over due process and was not
an appropriate metric to evaluate judges."  

"The Agency is in the process of developing new performance measures,
drawing from past successful measures and appropriate input, that will
accurately reflect the workload of an immigration judge," per a Tuesday
memo. "These new performance measures will focus on balance and equity
for the various types of docket assignments." 

In other news, we partnered with the Migration Policy
Institute, Rand and the Metropolitan Group to issue a new report
 that explores how
migration narratives develop, spread and are politically
weaponized. Amid elevated levels of migration worldwide (a topic
for Leading the Way
), this research
project is especially timely.  

Speaking of... have you registered for Leading the Way 2021

** **yet? Tomorrow is the deadline - and there's a fantastic
lineup of speakers and panels you won't want to miss. So, get your
free ticket ASAP.
  

Welcome to Thursday's edition of Noorani's Notes. If you have
a story to share from your own community, please send it to me
at [email protected]
. 

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**CHILD** EVACUEES - Per a letter from Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin, almost half of the 53,000 Afghan evacuees temporarily
living on U.S. military bases are children, Nancy A. Youssef reports
for The Wall Street Journal
. However,
the letter doesn't specify how many of those children are
unaccompanied minors, Youssef notes,
adding that "[s]everal hundred unaccompanied children were among
evacuees
 at
Ramstein Air Base in Germany, posing a challenge for base officials and
aid workers there." U.S. officials say about 6,000 Afghan evacuees
have been resettled across the U.S. so far. For this
week's new episode of Only in America
,
we spoke with Women of Welcome's Bri Stensrud about the powerful
work her community has done around Afghan resettlement. Here's
today's collection of local stories: 

* Jewish Family & Community Services in East Bay,
California, recently helped an Afghan family find an
apartment, enroll in school, and set up medical appointments.
(Rachele Kanigel, J. The Jewish News of Northern California
) 

* Volunteers with the International Service Center in the Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania area have "put out a call for canned and shelf stable
foods - along with clothing and household donations" to accommodate
Afghans longing for homemade meals. (Ivey DeJesus, Penn Live
) 

* Marine veteran Bob Koenig, who we mentioned yesterday, is wrapping
up his nearly 140-mile "Ruck for Refugees
" journey across central
Nebraska - the same distance his interpreter and family took to get
to safety - to raise awareness and funds for Afghan
refugees. (WOWT
) 

'MEAN-SPIRITED' - The 10-point Republican "Joint Policy
Framework on the Border Crisis
," spearheaded
by Texas Gov.
Greg Abbott, belies "an anti-immigrant and mean-spirited agenda,"
writes author and attorney Susan J. Cohen in an op-ed for The Hill
. If
adopted, Cohen writes, "not only would these policies make our country
less welcoming, they would cause untold numbers of unnecessary deaths
and make the United States more of a police state and less a civil
society." For our immigration approach to be fair and just, Cohen
concludes, "we must uphold our laws, stop branding and treating
immigrants as criminals and reset the moral compass of our U.S.
immigration agenda." 

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MPP FACILITIES - The Department of Homeland Security has officially
started building court facilities in Laredo, Texas, in anticipation of
reimplementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or "Remain in
Mexico" policy, reports Sandra Sanchez of Border Report
.
While the Biden administration opposed restarting the program, "the
Supreme Court in late August refused to block a lower federal
court's ruling in a lawsuit brought by Texas and Missouri
,"
forcing the administration to reinstate MPP. Regardless, "[the] U.S.
Government cannot unilaterally implement MPP without an independent
decision by the GOM (government of Mexico) to accept individuals that
the United States wishes to send to Mexico," wrote Blas
Nuñez-Neto, DHS acting assistant secretary for border and immigration
policy, in a court declaration.  

SEA ENCOUNTERS - The latest U.S. Customs and Border
Protection data reveals that agents stopped more migrants at sea in
2020 than during the previous three years, reports Andrea Castillo
for The Los Angeles Times
.
"Encounters at sea are still substantially lower than those on land, but
experts say the shift to maritime crossings - in response to
restrictive border policies and the devastation from COVID-19 across the
hemisphere - is amplifying the danger these migrants face as they seek
to reach the United States." And since October 2020, agents have
intercepted more than 330 marine vessels carrying 1,751 people in San
Diego region alone, which has the fourth largest port in
California.  

'TOO LONG' - A Government Accountability Office report found
that the backlog of applications for eligible immigrants to become
citizens more than doubled between 2015 and 2020, per Laura Gómez
Rodriguez at the Arizona Mirror
. The total U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) backlog increased 85%
during that time, with the agency citing the pandemic, application
changes and other factors for the delay. "Now it's time to become a
citizen. It's been many years and it's necessary," said Phoenix
resident Eleuterio Galindo, who has lived in the U.S. for two decades.
Galindo applied for citizenship in June 2020 and his application has
yet to be processed. "This is taking too long, and I need to travel
outside of the country." At the time Galindo applied, there were 11,447
people in Arizona waiting for their citizenship applications to be
processed. 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali 

 

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