After a series of hearings with attorneys on Friday, Hanen issued a two-page order, which upholds a July 2021 ruling that DACA is unlawful, in conjunction with his decision to temporarily protect current DACA recipients. This would apply to the new regulations in the future, notes Montoya-Galvez. 

Hanen is expected to rule on the legality of the new DACA regulations soon. 

The Justice Department has yet to announce whether it will appeal the DACA ruling from earlier this month, a move "that could pave the way for the Supreme Court to have the final say on DACA’s legality," explains Montoya-Galvez. 

"Once again, Dreamers and DACA recipients are forced to wait on edge for another court to render a decision that will determine our futures and the fate of our families," writes DACA recipient Juan Carlos Cerda in an op-ed for The Dallas Morning News.  

"For more than a decade, we have been at the mercy of government indecision that has sown anxiety, instability and legal limbo in our lives. Congress must end this agony ... If they fail to do so, they will find themselves scrambling to do so next year, with yet again another court decision or when the next president decides to end DACA once and for all," Cerda concluded. 

The bottom line is, sadly, the same as it’s been for over a decade: The future for Dreamers and DACA is still uncertain. Congress must act. Here is a way to support Dreamers. 

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

A SURVIVOR’S WORDS — In June, 53 smuggled migrants seeking asylum died after being abandoned in a semitrailer in the deadliest migrant tragedy in U.S. history. Dozens more survived the sweltering Texas heat — and a team at ABC News interviewed one of them. Marvin Gomez, originally from Guatemala, recounted in Spanish how he witnessed the deaths of fellow migrants amid a sense of helplessness: "I wish I could have knocked those doors down and saved their lives." Gomez used his life savings to journey north because he wanted his children to have better opportunities. He now lives in San Francisco with his brother and is trying to pick up the pieces and start a new life.  

REBUILDING THEIR LIVES — The group of mainly Venezuelan migrants who were unexpectedly sent to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last month are mostly settled throughout the state, with two now in New York, reports Mike Damiano of the Boston Globe. Many of them are working to rebuild their lives and find long-term housing, notes Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the head of Lawyers for Civil Rights. Over in New York, asylum seekers are grateful for the community’s support to get back on their feet, but are struggling to find work in the city due to federal rules on work permits, reports Karen Zraick of The New York Times. And in Chicago, several faith-based groups continue to welcome immigrants and refugees to the city, sharing lessons they’ve learned along the way with Adriana Cardona-Maguigad of WBEZ Chicago/ Curious City. 

‘OPERATION PINEAPPLE EXPRESS’ — Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret who had trained with Afghan special forces commandos in Afghanistan, participated in an operation that helped evacuate more than 1,000 Afghans after the fall of Kabul last year, per Martin Kuz for The Christian Science Monitor. He is now the author of "Operation Pineapple Express," which tells the story of the harrowing evacuation. "It’s easy to be jaded about what happened with the withdrawal," said Mann. "But as I was doing research on this book and interviewing people, the spirit of friendship and loyalty of those who had fought and bled together, and of perfect strangers who jumped into the fray and started helping — that was so uplifting." 

Locally: 

• With support from a relief agency, Sayed Sadat, who formerly worked at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, is now helping emergency room patients at the local Rochester Regional Health Hospital in New York. (Jennifer Lewke, News10NBC) 

RIGHT TO COUNSEL — New York continues to seek passing a "first-in-the-nation right" to counsel immigrants in deportation proceedings, reports Marco Poggio of Law360. Dubbed the Access to Representation Act, a bill proposed in January, "would require the state to appoint an attorney for every person who has a case before an immigration judge or has a basis to appeal an old deportation order," Poggio writes. An estimated 180,000 noncitizens in New York alone have pending immigration proceedings — and more than 52,000 of them are unrepresented, per Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data. For Borderless Magazine, Chelsea Verstegen dives deep into the challenges behind the shortage of immigration attorneys in Chicago, and the need to restructure resources.  

Thanks for reading, 

Becka  

P.S. Did you know pickled jalapeños were originally created in a factory in Xalapa, Mexico? Alan Chazaro, a poet and writer, has its great origin story in The Los Angeles Times.