“President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project,” Nick Miroff reports for The Washington Post. The funds will be taken out of military construction projects and counternarcotics funds, and the move would bring the total amount of federal funds allocated to the border wall to $18.4 billion.

Walls might make for powerful symbols, but it’s policy changes that lead to real impacts. As Michelle Hackman reports for The Wall Street Journal, “the administration’s patchwork of invisible barriers — policies designed to deter or prevent migrants from seeking asylum at all — has had far-reaching impact on life at the border,” cutting border crossings by more than 75% since last May.

Welcome to this Tuesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes.

WHERE ARE THEY HEADED? – For the first time ever, the U.S. is shipping asylum seekers at its border to a “safe third country,” Guatemala. However, as Kevin Sieff at The Washington Post reports, “during its first weeks, asylum seekers and human rights advocates say, migrants have been put on planes without being told where they were headed, and left here without being given basic information about what to do next.”

INVISIBLE WALLS – New data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shows that legal immigration declined by 87,000 — more than 7% — between fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2018, Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes. “Most of the decline can be traced to lower admissions in the Immediate Relatives of U.S. Citizens category, which includes the spouses, children and parents of Americans,” according to an analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy. And remember: Declining birthrates slowed population growth to the weakest levels in a century, as Shelly Hagan reported last week in Bloomberg.

FLU SHOTS – Despite warnings from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) about the importance of immunizing people against the flu (which killed 80,000 Americans in the winter of 2017-2018), border authorities will not allow flu immunizations for detained migrants, the Niskanen Center’s Kristie De Peña writes for The xxxxxx. “Even more irresponsibly, offers by private individuals to do so at no cost to the government have been spurned for no discernible reason.”

SCOTUS – Yesterday the Trump administration requested the Supreme Court overturn a lower court order blocking their “public charge” rule, report Ariane de Vogue, Geneva Sands, Priscilla Alvarez and Paul LeBlanc at CNN. Acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Ken Cuccinelli has defended the rule, arguing that “Self-sufficiency is a central part of America’s proud heritage and we proudly stand behind that tradition.” However, “immigration advocates have also argued that the rule goes beyond what Congress intended and would discriminate against those from poorer countries, would keep families apart and would prompt legal residents to forgo needed public aid, which could also affect their U.S. citizen children.”

SECRET TENT COURTS – Attorneys and immigration advocates are arguing that the Trump administration’s “tent courts,” or “makeshift tribunals where immigrants made to wait in Mexico attend hearings,” fail to give access to the public and are intentionally being held in secret, Adolfo Flores reports for BuzzFeed News. “Judges at the Fort Worth Immigration Adjudication Center, which the public has no access to, are overseeing the individual merits hearings via video that's beamed into tent courts in Brownsville, Texas. At the same time, no one is allowed to attend the hearings in person, effectively closing off public access.” Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the system is “highly problematic … Using these adjudication centers and judges is clearly intentional. The agency is trying to operate these cases in secret.”
Thanks for reading,

Ali