After U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released a report on arrests of people who requested Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, penned an opinion piece in The National Interest comparing those numbers to the general population.
“No matter how you compare the arrest rate for DACA applicants to all others, the former group has a lower arrest rate,” Nowrasteh concludes. “Since the USCIS report and this post just measure arrest rates, the criminal conviction rate is necessarily lower as there are more arrests than convictions – as I show in Texas. The USCIS report is just further evidence that illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans.”
Welcome to Monday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
NOLA – Delmer Joel Ramírez Palma, a Honduran citizen and construction worker who tried to warn management about the dangers of the deadly Hard Rock Hotel collapse in New Orleans, will be deported today, reports Lauren Zanolli in The Guardian. “Immediately after the accident, he was interviewed by a Spanish-language media outlet. Two days later, he was arrested by immigration authorities while fishing with his family in a national wildlife refuge. He has lived in New Orleans for 18 years.”

“I DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE” – Between 2016 and 2018, Amani Ballour saved thousands of lives while running an underground field hospital in Eastern Ghouta, Syria, writes Rania Abouzeid in National Geographic [paywall]. The heroic story of Ballour’s efforts to provide medical care and support to an entire town besieged by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces is featured in a National Geographic documentary, The Cave. Ballour is now a refugee in Turkey: “I’m a refugee because I fled oppression and danger. I didn't want to leave. … We were besieged and bombarded and we persisted for six years, we didn't want to leave. It was a very, very difficult moment.”

MENTAL HEALTH – A recent study suggests that spikes in immigration arrests may be having a negative impact on Hispanic Americans' mental health, writes Lisa Rapaport at Reuters. From 2014 to 2018 — at a time when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made over 440,601 arrests — the authors of the study, Emilie Bruzelius of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Aaron Baum of the Icahn School of Medicine, write: “Overall, more than one third of these participants reported at least one day of poor mental health in the previous month, and about 11% reported frequent mental distress.”
“PROUD AMERICAN” – “Nearly a quarter century before he was elected to the Sacramento City Council, Eric Guerra was a 4-year-old child smuggled from Mexico into this country without the permission of the U.S. government. This was an act of desperation by Guerra’s parents,” Marcos Bretón writes for The Sacramento Bee. It wasn’t until President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that Guerra’s life turned around — he was able to come out of the shadows and go to college, and eventually became the first Latino elected to the Sacramento City Council. “I’m a proud American,” Guerra says. “In no other country, including Mexico, can you see someone grow up dirt poor and be given a fair chance to accomplish things.”
FOREIGNER TO FAMILY – For the past two years, local volunteers from the Embassy Church have been visiting detainees at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Denver, writes Angela K. Evans in Christianity Today. While detained and isolated in a new country, Martin Akwa, an asylum seeker from Cameroon, found solace in these visits from volunteers — and was eventually released to live with some of them while his asylum case was processed. Since then, he has made a life in Denver joining the church and playing soccer. “On October 22, Akwa won his asylum case. He no longer lives in fear of deportation.”

PRICE OF ADMISSION – Submitting immigration applications could become more expensive as a result of new Trump administration policies, Obed Manuel reports for the Dallas Morning News. The 21% overall increase for certain applications — including an 83% increase in the price of a citizenship application — hurts newcomers: “policy analysts worry that the increases will keep eligible immigrants from being able to complete the legal immigration process, especially because the proposal also eliminates or limits availability of some fee waivers.”
Thanks for reading,
Ali