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For the first time, a U.S. reporter offers a window into how Transnational Criminal Investigative Units (TCIUs) operate. Axios’ Stef W. Kight witnessed a specialized group of Guatemala’s national police, trained by U.S. Homeland Security officials, raid a home and seize evidence of efforts to make fraudulent visas. The police group is meant "to crack down on migrant and drug smuggling, human trafficking, fraud and other crimes that impact American security." The Guatemalan TCIU has been working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security since 2011 and is now the largest in the world, Kight reports. "We’re extending the border," said Ricardo Mayoral, deputy assistant director at Homeland Security Investigations. "We’re providing the capacity, the training to our partners in the Western Hemisphere and other areas of the world" to stop criminal and clandestine networks from entering the U.S. With another cheer for Frances Tiafoe after his U.S. Open quarterfinal victory yesterday, 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]. PUBLIC CHARGE RULE — New this morning: The Biden administration has published a final rule to roll back the Trump administration’s "public charge" rule, Rebecca Beitsch reports in The Hill. The current administration already had stopped defending the rule in court last year. "This action ensures fair and humane treatment of legal immigrants and their U.S. citizen family members," DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a release. "Consistent with America’s bedrock values, we will not penalize individuals for choosing to access the health benefits and other supplemental government services available to them." HEALTH CARE ACCESS — Speaking of accessing health care: Many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. continue to delay or forgo health care treatment because of fear of deportation, the cost of medical care and other reasons, reports Priyanka Runwal of the National Geographic. The unique health care challenges adult undocumented immigrants face "are having nationwide consequences," Runwal writes. "I don’t feel like [medical professionals] see me the same way as they see someone who’s American," said Imelda, an asylum seeker from Mexico, who initially contracted COVID-19 as an undocumented and uninsured patient. "I wish everyone was treated the same." For Northern Public Radio, Maria Gardner Lara interviews Luvia Quiñones, senior health policy director for the Illinois Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, who underscores: "We all have a right to healthcare." ‘MORE HARM THAN GOOD’ — Health experts and others say the continuing use of Title 42 is doing "more harm than good," Valerie Gonzalez reports in The Guardian. According to a recent estimate, about 55,500 people are waiting along the U.S.-Mexico border with Title 42 still in place. "Health care workers have not only corroborated the high levels of violence against migrants in northern Mexico, they have reported that asylum-seekers expelled from the U.S. have been forced to live in increasingly unsafe and unsanitary conditions," Physicians for Human Rights wrote in a Title 42-related amicus brief last month. AFGHANS’ UNCERTAINTY — For The Christian Science Monitor, Sarah Matusek tells the story of Afghan evacuees including Aida and Maryam — names changed for their family’s safety — who came to the U.S. via humanitarian parole and have found refuge in muay thai, or Thai boxing, in Denver. "Without my family, it is so hard for me," Maryam said. But the class at a Denver gym helps, "because they are like my family." Edrees, another parolee, captures his welcome and uncertainty in a single breath: "I feel like I’m part of something good. What’s going to happen next?" As Matusek notes, advocates have been urging Congress to pass the bipartisan Afghan Adjustment Act, which would provide Afghan evacuees already in the U.S. a path to permanent residency. Locally:
‘THEY GAIN CONFIDENCE’ — Kaushila Khanal Karmacharya and her family had to flee Bhutan when she was a child, and she grew up in a refugee camp in Nepal — where she first encountered taekwondo, Peter Gill reports in The Columbus Dispatch. She is now the founder of Sunshine Taekwondo Academy in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, teaching more than 200 students in three different languages. "Taekwondo is for self-defense and for health. But it’s also about socialization — kids come here and they gain confidence," Karmacharya said in Nepali. Thanks for reading, Dan |
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