"While the administration has said it would improve protections for enrollees in MPP, this incident reflects the stresses migrants still endure while waiting — and holes in a system intended to catch red-flag cases," explains Kight. The woman was treated at a hospital and has come to the U.S. under medical parole. 

"People on MPP we serve suffer from anxiety, stress, and a sense of hopelessness, and often, helplessness," said Blanca Lomeli, director of the Mexican branch of HIAS, which serves refugees. "The reality is that the prolonged stay in Mexico is negatively impacting their mental health."

International Organization for Migration data indicates that 5,600 asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico since a court forced the Biden administration to restart the program in December. That compares with an estimated 70,000 from the program’s start in January 2019 through its suspension after Biden took office. 

And as Sofía Mejías-Pascoe reports in inewsource, shelters at the border are struggling to meet the basic needs of people waiting in Mexico under MPP or being turned back at the border under Title 42. 

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

103 COMPANIES — The nonprofit Tent Partnership for Refugees has enlisted 103 companies, including Delta, Pfizer, and Marriott, "to commit to reducing barriers for refugees looking for jobs and helping them integrate into the U.S. economy," Jalen Small reports in Newsweek. Under the moniker Coalition for Refugees in the U.S., the companies commit to offering mentorship and training opportunities to all refugees in the U.S. The businesses’ commitment is timely not only as the U.S. works to resettle refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine in particular, but also amid a worker shortage. "In states with labor shortages, we have seen governors of both political parties increasing the admissions of refugees in the last year, partly because they need to," said Gideon Maltz, executive director of the Tent Partnership. 

LOOMING DEADLINE — The one-year deadline to apply for asylum and avoid deportation is nearing for hundreds of Afghans living in Wisconsin, reports Erin Sullivan for WMTV. With a limited number of immigration lawyers in Wisconsin, Grant Sovern, president of the board of directors at the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, has partnered with immigration and legal organizations across the state to create a training program to teach non-immigration attorneys about the asylum application process. "We’ve gotten a really great response but still we need hundreds of lawyers to do this," he said. An Afghan Adjustment Act would solve many of these challenges. 

Elsewhere in local welcome:  

• In Cleveland, disaster relief nonprofit Team Rubicon continues to help newly arrived Afghan families secure housing, with nearly 30 volunteers "meeting multiple days per week to collect donated items, manage inventory, and move families into their new homes." (Sam Allard, Scene) 
• Medical students at the University of Washington have partnered with Refugee Connections Spokane to help Afghan refugees navigate medical records and receive services in both Dari and English. (Treva Lind, The Spokesman-Review) 

PRIVATE PRISONS — Whether states have a say in the federal government’s use of private prisons for immigration detention is at the heart of a lawsuit in California, Rebecca Schneid reports for The Los Angeles Times. A panel of judges voted that the state’s ban on for-profit prisons must exclude federal immigration detention centers, but the case is being appealed. The lawsuit’s outcome could "indicate how much discretion states have when it comes to regulations that might affect the federal government’s immigration detention centers" across the country, said Michael Kaufman, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. 

NOT CHEAP — Newly obtained state records show that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) order to bus undocumented immigrants from the border to Washington, D.C., has cost more than $1,400 per rider, a team at NBC DFW reports — more than the cost of a first-class plane ticket from some Texas border towns to D.C. Moreover, the state’s taxpayers may have to foot some of the bill: Abbott’s effort to raise private funds has netted $112,000, while the trips’ costs exceeded $1.6 million in April and May alone. And Abbott’s punch is not landing on the federal government, as he’d hoped: Local organizations in D.C. are helping migrants reach their final destinations (including — wait for it — in Texas).  

AGING OUT — From age 10, Kartik Sivakumar grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a dependent visa connected to his father’s temporary visa. His father applied for a green card in 2015 but is still waiting — and Sivakumar, now 21, aged out of his dependent-visa eligibility in February and self-deported to India, leaving his senior year at the University of Iowa behind. His story is not unique, as Teresa Mathew writes in The New Yorker: One estimate puts the number of "documented Dreamers" at more than 250,000. A bill in Congress would offer a solution to some documented Dreamers, but its prospects are uncertain. Sivakumar was able to return to the U.S. on a student visa — but that’s also temporary. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan