CBS News’ Li Cohen offers a sobering summary of the places in the world facing significant external displacement. Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, Palestine, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Ethiopia's Tigray region, northeast Nigeria, the Sahel region — and now Ukraine — have all seen well over a million people displaced.  

As Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in The Washington Post, "Instead of welcoming refugees with open arms, current efforts hold them at arm’s length." 

‘HEAL DIVISION’ — Faith, business, national security and advocacy organizations last week launched the Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus, calling for protections for Dreamers, farmworkers and TPS recipients along with humane border security. In an op-ed for Newsweek this morning, Bishop Mario Dorsonville, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration; Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, write: "What most Americans probably do not realize is just how close we are to the DACA program being dissolved—throwing the lives of 650,000 individuals into turmoil." Going beyond a range of polling highlighting the deep public support for reform, they write, "Despite our disagreements on how to interpret the scriptures—and even what texts are canonical—we agree that immigrants are made in God's image and worthy of respect." Even though the nation is divided, "addressing our nation's long-dysfunctional immigration policies can be a unique way to heal division." 

ANKLE MONITORS II — The second part of Johana Bhuiyan’s investigation of ICE’s alternatives to detention program in The Guardian finds that the contractor, BI Inc., uses substandard technology, with reports of ankle monitors overheating, causing bruising, and at times sending out electroshocks, plus BI’s proprietary app frequently malfunctioning. "At least 182,607 people were enrolled in [ICE’s alternatives to detention program] as of January, according to [ICE] data, making it the largest supervision program of any US law enforcement agency." And it’s a supervision program operated by a company that got its start in monitoring cattle and is owned by one of the country’s largest private prison corporations, the GEO Group. 

GREEN CARDS — The push to include language that would recapture unused green cards in an omnibus spending bill is looking tenuous. Ellen M. Gilmer with Bloomberg News reports that the spending bill "omits previously drafted provisions that would have salvaged unused immigrant visas from recent fiscal years beset by processing delays … More than 200,000 immigrant visas in the family and employment categories went to waste last year." Early this morning, Gilmer tweeted an update that the bill "overall softens Dems’ prior efforts to cut $ for immigration/border enforcement," and "CBP, ICE get more than White House requested." 

ICE SURVEILLANCE — ICE obtained about 6 million financial records of people who sent or received money transfers — and the information went into a database that law enforcement officials can access, according to a letter to DHS from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News that Wyden is seeking an investigation of the program, which comprised Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico since 2019, to determine whether it was constitutional. "Instead of squandering resources collecting millions of transactions from people merely because they live or transact with individuals in a handful of Southwestern states or have relatives in Mexico, [Homeland Security Investigations] and other agencies should focus their resources on individuals actually suspected of breaking the law," Wyden wrote in his letter.