Monday, October 25
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NOORANI'S NOTES

 

 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released official border
encounter data
 for
fiscal year 2021 on Friday. While CBP recorded "nearly 1.7 million
migrant apprehensions
 at
the Southern border over the past year - the highest number ever,
eclipsing the record set more than two decades ago," Joel Rose reports
for NPR
,
"that doesn't mean it's the biggest number of individual migrants
who've illegally crossed from Mexico into the U.S. in a single
year." 

My colleague Danilo Zak breaks it down in this savvy Twitter thread
. First
off, August and September data show overall apprehensions are down for
the first time in 1.5 years, dropping 10% since July.  

Demographics are also changing: More single adults,
fewer families and children. More migrants came from Haiti,
Colombia, and Venezuela; fewer from Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras. 

And Title 42 continued to have a significant impact: 53%
of arrivals were expelled with no chance to apply for asylum. 

Welcome to Monday's edition of Noorani's Notes. Today we
kick off Leading the Way
 at 3 p.m.
ET. Our first discussion, focused on global migration,
features UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi and World's Mindy
Belz. Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colorado)
and Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) will close the afternoon with a
conversation on Afghan resettlement.  

Big thank you to our event sponsors and to Forum staff for what is
sure to be a great event. Register by 1 p.m. EST to guarantee your
spot
! 

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AFGHAN INITIATIVE - In a "massive change" to the Afghan
resettlement program, the Biden administration is launching an
initiative to give veterans and others with ties to Afghans the
opportunity to bring evacuees to their cities, Priscilla
Alvarez reports for CNN
. Operating
as a private sponsorship, the program would allow greater
flexibility for resettlement locations - but would be "dependent
on people signing up and having the resources to support Afghans and
their families." Meanwhile, more than 30 organizations, including the
Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty
Commission, signed on to an Oct. 12 letter urging administration
officials to help Afghan religious minorities, reports Tom Strode of
the Baptist Press
. And Lutheran
Immigration and Refugee Service President and CEO Krish
O'Mara Vignarajah (who's speaking at LTW
 today) penned
a great piece for The Baltimore Sun
 on
supporting Afghan women and girls.  

Here's today's collection of local stories:  

* Boulder, Colorado, resident and Afghanistan veteran Chris Liggett
used social media to help a former employee, Matiullah, and his
family escape Afghanistan and resettle in the U.S. (Annie
Mehl, Longmont Times-Call
) 

* Wisconsin veteran Zac Lois took a leave of absence from his job as
a history teacher to join Task Force Pineapple, a group of veterans
who are helping rescue Afghan allies. (Megan Carpenter, Spectrum News
1
) 

* The Salvation Army of Central Indiana donated more than 1,600
coats to Afghans temporarily housed at Camp Atterbury "as part of the
major statewide effort" to support Afghan evacuees. (WBIW
) 

* The Northern Virginia chapter of Lasagna Love
, a nonprofit that brings comfort food to
those who need it, is making Halal meals for Afghan refugees living in
the area. (Valerie Bonk, WTOP
) 

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ZERO - The U.S. government has recognized the Chinese
government's campaign against Uyghurs as genocide -
but it admitted zero Uyghur refugees in fiscal year 2021, report
Harvest Prude and Haley Byrd Wilt for The Dispatch
. "Refugees
from China have consistently represented a slim portion of total
admissions in recent years, but a downward trend has been especially
noticeable since 2016," they write. China "makes it exceptionally
difficult for refugees to escape," they add, "[b]ut those who do make
it out of the country must also overcome bureaucratic hurdles and slow
processing of their asylum claims." And while the Biden
administration has raised the refugee cap for this
fiscal year, "I've still not seen a dedicated influx of resources to
the refugee resettlement programs that would indicate they're ever
going to be able to process 125,000," said Elizabeth Neumann, former
assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention at the
Department of Homeland Security.  

BUILDING TRUST - New immigration enforcement priorities from
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will help keep
communities safe regardless of immigration status, writes Orlando
Rolón, chief of the Orlando police department and co-chair of
the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force ,
for Morning Consult
. The updated guidelines "shift
how federal immigration authorities will employ prosecutorial
discretion, moving away from rigid enforcement categories in favor of
individualized assessments that focus on the public interest," he
writes. "And for those of us on the local level who work to build trust
with our immigrant communities, this will help alleviate fear of law
enforcement." 

Thanks for reading, 

Ali

 

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