Texas District Court Judge Keno Vasquez has temporarily blocked the crowdfunded “We Build the Wall” effort to build a portion of the border wall along the Rio Grande, reports Neil Vigdor at The New York Times. The temporary restraining order follows a lawsuit from the National Butterfly Center, which argues that the wall would upset the delicate local ecosystem.
Judge Vasquez wrote: “The defendants’ conduct has demonstrated irreparable harm to plaintiff since defendants have committed willfully, maliciously and with an actual and subjective intent to commit great harm to plaintiff.”
Welcome to the Thursday edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].
BISHOP BIEGLER – Wyoming Bishop Steven Biegler is speaking out against an expanded proposal for a private detention center in Evanston, Wyoming, that would detain up to 1,000 migrants, Heidi Schlumpf reports for the National Catholic Reporter. In a public statement, Biegler said that the facility “divides us from our migrant brothers and sisters and separates families, and it allows for a system in which for-profit prison companies and their stockholders and business partners make a great deal of money on the misery of human persons.”
SCOOP – A draft Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that shows how, through the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, some border officials “apparently pressured asylum officers to deny immigrants entry and prevent others from being interviewed,” Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News. “The findings were part of a review into a controversial Trump administration program to keep asylum-seekers in Mexico as their cases wind through the US system. So far, more than 60,000 immigrants have been thrust into the program.” The report finds "serious problems that need to be remedied.”
MS. MAGAZINE – With a new agreement in place to send asylum seekers in the U.S. to violence-torn El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the Trump administration is endangering migrants and “flout[ing] its legal and moral obligations,” argues Karen Musalo, a law professor and director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, in an op-ed for Ms. Magazine. “Widespread violence and instability [in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras] have caused their own inhabitants to flee in large numbers, seeking protection outside their borders, and none of these countries have asylum systems capable of processing the claims of the hundreds or thousands of asylum seekers the U.S. could send their way.”
MCKINSEY’S ROLE – New documents obtained by The New York Times and ProPublica show that private consulting firm McKinsey & Company has been a driving force behind many of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies. “The consultants, three people who worked on the project said, seemed focused solely on cutting costs and speeding up deportations — actions whose success could be measured in numbers — with little acknowledgment that these policies affected thousands of human beings,” reports Ian MacDougall.
INVISIBLE BARRIERS – In their latest episode, Reveal takes an investigative deep dive into three immigration policy issues, including the H-1B visa crackdown (reported by Sinduja Rangarajan), federal mishandling of the U visa (reported by Laura C. Morel) and the increasingly difficult path to citizenship (reported by Monica Campbell). Highly recommend this listen.
“A DEFENSIVE CROUCH” – Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will joined Dr. Russell Moore, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, for the newest episode of Dr. Moore’s Signposts podcast, discussing faith, capitalism and a variety of domestic policy issues — including immigration. “We need immigrants as much as the immigrants need us … It’s very unbecoming of the United States to go into a defensive crouch and say we’re afraid of people who are eager to come in here and go to work. We have 6 million unfilled jobs right now,” Will said.
ONLY IN AMERICA – This week on “Only in America,” I chat with Vivek Venugopal — an improviser, comedian, actor, musician, and the director of revenue at Speechless, Inc., which teaches an improv comedy approach to public speaking. We talked about using comedy to help people reflect on their own immigrant heritage, and the importance of immigrants telling their own stories.
Thanks for reading,
Ali
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