Two men, Michael Sheppard and his twin brother, Mark, have been arrested and charged with manslaughter in the migrant shootings, J. David Goodman reports in The New York Times. Michael Sheppard was, until this week, the warden of a private immigrant detention center in Sierra Blanca. In The Intercept, Ryan Devereaux has more details on Michael Sheppard’s history at the center, including claims of abuse "so severe that a federal prosecutor at one point sought the attention of the FBI." 

The Sheppards said they were hunting and had made "no effort to determine what they had shot and left the scene for a county board meeting," Devereaux notes. 

In other news in Texas, Elizabeth Trovall of the Houston Chronicle has more on concerns identified in a Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s report regarding Fort Bliss in El Paso. In 2021, an estimated 700 unaccompanied migrant children held at Fort Bliss went weeks without hearing from their case managers on reunification efforts. The lack of updates led to reports of "emotional distress, anxiety, panic attacks and even self-harm among youth," per the report. 

And in the Rio Grande Valley, two construction companies were awarded $307 million contracts on Thursday to build about 14 more miles of border barriers, per The Texas Tribune’s Uriel J. García.  

Welcome to Friday’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].  

DELAYS AND BACKLOGS — Immigration applications at U.S. consulates and embassies are on pause because of increased scrutiny from the State Department, reports Andrew Kreighbaum of Bloomberg Law. The additional reviews often come with no explanation of the concerns or how applicants can respond, nor a timeline for a resolution, immigration attorneys say. "It’s a bit of a black hole," said Fuji Whittenburg, managing partner at Whittenburg Immigration. "You want to avoid it at all costs." Meanwhile, Gordon Gray of the American Action Forum is out with a new report in which he looks at the cost of eliminating backlogs at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — and the larger potential economic benefits of doing so. And speaking of USCIS, yesterday the agency awarded nearly $20 million in grants, to 66 organizations in 35 states, to prepare immigrants for naturalization and promote civic integration.  

MIGRANT TRANSPORT STORIES — In a story both heartbreaking and heartwarming, Paula Aceves chronicles a 27-year-old Venezuelan man’s journey to the U.S., centering on his unexpected stop at Martha’s Vineyard, in New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer. "I’m so thankful to those people on Martha’s Vineyard who reached out to us and treated us like their family," the man said. In the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, Sam González Kelly and photographer Jerry Lara got a feel for the experiences of migrants bused from Texas to Chicago. "They’ve treated us really well (in Chicago) and I’m so grateful for the support and a place to sleep, but what we all really want is to work so we can help our families," said Renny Garcia, 25, also from Venezuela. 

SEEKING ASYLUM — Freelance journalist Alexandra Villarreal offers potential solutions for a "deeply flawed" U.S. asylum system in an opinion piece for The Guardian. Among Villarreal’s recommendations are instituting a more humane process for asylum seekers, updating the formal definition of asylum and related terms, and establishing new legal pathways to seek asylum. "Even if the U.S. chooses to redirect its course on human rights, mere reforms won’t immediately fix things. But they can at least reduce harms and injustices," she writes. Meanwhile, in an op-ed in The Hill, author and Stanford University professor Tomás Jiménez writes that there’s an opportunity to find common ground on more welcoming policies for immigrants. Transporting migrants to other states, he writes, "ignores the facts: Policies that are more welcoming to immigrants who are already here — including those that offer a pathway to citizenship — are good for immigrants, good for Americans, and therefore, good for the United States." 

ARIZONA — Arizona residents should vote ‘yes’ on Proposition 308, which would restore in-state tuition eligibility to undocumented students, writes The Arizona Republic’s editorial board. Dreamers offer untapped talent and revenue for the economy, and "Proposition 308 merely restores their eligibility for educational assistance that all other qualified Arizonans would receive," the board writes. "... It’s the smart thing to do. It’s also the right thing to do." Meanwhile, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), a Marine veteran, proposed legislation Thursday that would allow Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to enlist in the military and earn a pathway to lawful permanent residency, Caroline Simon reports in Roll Call. "While it is partly an immigration issue, it’s also a national security issue, especially right now," Gallego said. 

‘IT’S A BLESSING’ — Top scorer in the NBA, All-Star, and now American citizen: Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers was sworn in two weeks ago, reports Dan Gelston of the Associated Press. "I’ve been here for a long time," said Embiid, who is originally from Cameroon and also has French citizenship. "My son is American. I felt like, I’m living here and it’s a blessing to be an American. So I said, why not?" 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

P.S. For the reading list: "As touching as it is sad, and as full of hope and kindness as it is harrowing, ‘Solito’ is the kind of narrative that manages to bring a huge debate down to a very personal space," Gabriel Iglesias of NPR writes in his review of Javier Zamora’s new book.