We want to highlight some of the best immigration stories of the year.

An immigration rights protest along the U.S. / Mexico border wall in November 2018. CREDIT: Peg Hunter (Creative Commons)

This year, reporters across the U.S. chronicled an endless deluge of immigration news that unraveled every week, if not every day. They covered workplace raids, overcrowded border cells, separated migrant families, shelter conditions for unaccompanied children, high profile court appeals, and the list goes on.

This week, we wanted to highlight some of the best immigration stories of the year, the ones that stayed with us and inspired us to continue reporting on the human impact of President Trump’s restrictive immigration policies at the border and beyond.

Here are our favorites:


** How ICE Picks Its Targets in the Surveillance Age.
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In this New York Times Magazine story ([link removed]) , reporter McKenzie Funk sifted through thousands of documents to reconstruct how Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses recorded calls from detention facilities and driver’s license information from state DMV databases to target immigrants. Among the most surprising details: dispatch recordings of ICE agents calling the local sheriff’s office to inform them of their surveillance stops. From the story:

For most of the next few hours, according to the sheriff’s dispatch records, Miller and Dietz kept sitting there. At 9:57 a.m., Miller called in to say they were clearing out. As apparently happened in April and again earlier in June, they were leaving empty-handed. But then, 18 minutes later, he called back. “Sorry to keep bothering you guys,” he said, chuckling apologetically.

“That’s O.K.,” the dispatcher replied.

“We’re headed back up to Ocean Park,” he said. “We think our person is going to be heading over to the Bank of the Pacific.”
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**
‘Everybody cries here’: Hope and despair in Mexican shelter.
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Reporters at The Associated Press ([link removed]) embedded in a Juarez shelter called El Buen Pastor to tell the stories of its inhabitants. The shelter with four toilets, a chapel and spotty Wi-Fi is a temporary respite for migrants holding out for a chance at U.S. asylum in the midst of President Trump’s crackdown. From the story:

The shelter ripples with often-unspoken bigotries, with ribbons of race and class and education in nearly every interaction. Daily life is marked by brutal summer heat, occasional dust storms, crushing boredom and the guilt of mothers who can’t afford dinner for their children.

But occasionally, it’s also a place of muchene enkoko (Ugandan-style chicken and rice) and arroz a la Valenciano (Nicaraguan-style chicken and rice). It’s a place of children’s games, young romance and Scrabble matches that seem to stretch into eternity. Anything to make the time pass.
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** Immigrant kids fill this town’s schools. Their bus driver is leading the backlash.
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Worthington, Minnesota, population 13,000, has received more unaccompanied children per capita than almost anywhere in the country. Their presence has fueled resentment from longtime locals, reports Michael E. Miller for The Washington Post ([link removed]) . The story begins with school bus driver Don Brink:

At the corner of Dover Street and Douglas Avenue, a handful of Hispanic children were waiting. At Milton Avenue, there were a few more. And at Omaha Avenue, a dozen students climbed aboard — none of them white.

Brink said nothing.“I say ‘good morning’ to the kids who’ll respond to me,” he said later. “But this year there are a lot of strange kids I’ve never seen before.”
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** Immigration Officials Use Secretive Gang Databases to Deny Migrant Asylum Claims.
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In this ProPublica stor ([link removed]) y ([link removed]) , reporter Melissa del Bosque uncovers the Trump administration’s practice of using gang intelligence databases containing information from foreign authorities to background check asylum-seekers. Lawyers and advocates say the database has been kept mostly secret, making it difficult to verify its reliability. Yet the government is still using the database as a basis to separate children from parents with uncorroborated gang affiliations. From the story:

Carlos, now reunited with his two children, said he wants to clear his record, but he doesn’t know how, and he can’t return to El Salvador because it would be a death sentence. “I came here seeking protection and because I had no other choice,” he said. “And I was accused of being in a gang, when I was fleeing the gangs, all based on evidence I’ve never seen.”
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** Being An Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable.
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BuzzFeed News reporter Hamed Aleaziz has been relentless in his weekly coverage of the Trump administration’s policies, from his stories on the conditions at border facilities ([link removed]) to restrictions on asylum officers ([link removed]) . In February, Aleaziz exposed, through interviews and leaked emails, the low morale among immigration judges under the current administration. From the story:

Jamil, a mother of two young daughters, had been shaken by the images and sounds that came as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to separate families at the border. As a judge who oversaw primarily cases of women and children fleeing abuse and dangers abroad, this was the last straw.

Soon after, she stepped down from the court.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told friends. “I felt that I couldn’t be ‘Rebecca Jamil, representative of the attorney general’ while these things were going on.”
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Do you have a story you want to add? Let me know on Twitter. ([link removed])
A map from the Human Rights First report on the impact of the Trump Administration policy to return asylum seekers to Mexico.


** THE DANGERS MIGRANT FAMILIES FACE IN MEXICO
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Asylum-seeking families are regularly the target of violent crimes as they wait in Mexican migrant camps for their court dates in the U.S., according to a new report released by the nonprofit Human Rights First.

In January, the Trump administration began returning migrants to Mexico. Now, more than 55,000 migrants ([link removed]) have been sent there under the program “Migrant Protection Protocols.” Many stay in overcrowded shelters or tent camps with little access ([link removed]) to medical care and showers.

According to the Human Rights First report, “There are now at least 636 public reports of rape, kidnapping, torture, and other violent attacks against asylum seekers and migrants returned to Mexico under MPP.”

The report, based on interviews with asylum-seekers, attorneys, court monitors and Mexican government officials, found that cartel members routinely kidnap and assault migrants and their children. Some immigration judges have also approved removal orders for migrants who missed court dates after being kidnapped in Mexico. Among those cases is a woman who missed a hearing in El Paso because she was searching for her 2-year-old son.

“Our count of kidnappings and violent assaults is only the tip of the iceberg,” the report states.

Read the report here. ([link removed])
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** 3 THINGS WE’RE READING
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1. A secret report written by an ICE whistleblower details cases of detainee deaths, preventable surgeries and “grossly negligent” medical care. (BuzzFeed News ([link removed]) )

The memo sheds light on, among other cases, the “inadequate medical care” provided to an 8-year-old boy who had part of his forehead surgically removed after complications with an ear infection.

The kicker: Overall, the memo says, the whistleblower alleged that IHSC “has systematically provided inadequate medical and mental health care and oversight to immigration detainees across the U.S.” The memo also says the inspector general will investigate the whistleblower’s allegation that they were retaliated against for raising the issues.

2. Despite warnings from experts that detaining children causes developmental damage, the Trump administration is moving to expand family detention. (New York Times ([link removed]) )

The government wants to expand its network of family detention centers and appealed a judge’s decision last month that blocks these efforts. If the appeal is successful, reports the Times, “facilities like the one at Dilley, which is run by the private prison company CoreCivic, could multiply to incarcerate more than 15,000 parents and children across the country.”

The kicker: Canada and much of Europe process migrant families in the way the United States does currently, with most detained only temporarily on the way into or out of the country. Under the Trump administration’s plan, the United States would join Australia to become only the second country in the world with a policy to detain migrant families through the end of their legal cases — often for months or years.

3. Since President Trump’s “zero tolerance” crackdown purportedly ended in the summer of 2018, at least 1,100 children have been separated from parents. (The Intercept ([link removed]) )
Among the recently separated is Dennis, a father from Honduras who was split up from his 11-year-old daughter for five months. The government’s basis for the separation: Dennis had a decade old forgery charge.

The kicker: Sonia was in New York in an Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, shelter, where she was living with a number of other children. In Honduras, after Dennis’s deportation, the rest of the family waited in agony for nearly 5 months, until October 9, when Sonia was released and then flown home. “My wife,” Dennis said, “she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. You can’t imagine the suffering. And, don’t forget,” he reminded me, “she had two other kids to raise.”

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– Laura C. Morel
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