Welcome to the #GivingTuesday edition of Noorani’s Notes. If you find these Notes useful, please consider supporting our work at the National Immigration Forum. We are tremendously grateful.
Now, to the news…
The Department of Homeland Security’s inadequate medical technology and record management may have contributed to poor care and even deaths at the border, Darius Tahir reports for Politico. Reviews of 22 deaths of detainees “echo persistent complaints from experts and advocates for migrants’ rights who say attention to medical needs of asylum seekers is indifferent at best. Recent reports indicate that Customs and Border Patrol rejected a CDC recommendation to administer flu shots to people in custody; two children later died of flu in the agency’s facilities.”
Meanwhile, Dianne Solis at The Dallas Morning News reports that more unauthorized immigrants are turning toward charity clinics, health fairs and medicine rationing as they struggle to patch together adequate health care, fearing that hospitals will share their information with immigration agencies. The charity clinic Agape, which doesn’t accept government funding, says it expects 18,000 patient visits this year — more than a third of whom will be children.
LEFT BEHIND – Tom Kiefer, a former janitor at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in southern Arizona, secretly collected and photographed belongings seized from migrants between 2003 and 2014, Makeda Easter writes in the Los Angeles Times. More than 100 of his photographs are now on display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Yet one of the show’s biggest tragedies, according to Skirball curator Laura Mart, is that “we have no way of knowing really who these people are, who carried these things, what happened to them, and what they’re doing now.”
IMMIGRANT HAULERS – A story that is literally making its way across the country: More immigrants — including about 150,000 from northern and western India — are taking on jobs as long-haul truckers, reports Laura Benshoff for Pennsylvania’s WHYY. And with immigrants fueling the interstate economy, new Indian restaurants are popping up at truck stops along the country’s major shipping routes. Eat Spice, an Indian restaurant in White Haven, Pennsylvania (population 1,100), caters to a “unique intersection” of diverse truckers craving a taste of home in the heart of rural America. Stay tuned for an “Only in America” episode on this.
ASYLUM REJECTIONS – The rate of asylum seekers denied in New York City’s immigration court — the nation’s largest — has risen about 17 times faster than the rest of the country under the Trump administration, report Paul Moses and Tim Healy for The Daily Beast. With many New York judges retiring, new hires are under pressure from the administration to meet production quotas. Those new hires are “normally of the background that this administration thinks will be statistically more likely to deny cases,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former New York immigration judge.
THE BUS IS THE CLASSROOM – A new look at a story we first highlighted back in August: A converted school bus in Tijuana has been transformed into a classroom for immigrant children seeking asylum in the U.S. The effort is part of the Yes We Can Mobile School project of the Yes We Can Foundation, which aims to support children trapped on Mexican’s norther border. A Los Angeles Times video takes you inside the classroom.
CHURCH OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS – The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints released a statement yesterday calling on its members to “help create welcoming communities” for the more than 70 million refugees across the globe, Scott Taylor reports for Church News. “It is … with great concern and compassion that we observe the plight of more than 70 million people around the world who have fled their homes seeking relief from violence, war, or religious persecution,” the statement said.
Thanks for reading,
Ali
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