"If you put roadblocks at a time when there is great need in fields like engineering, doctors, nursing, it’s an ill-advised and ill-conceived idea," said Eduardo Padrón, former president of Miami Dade College, in a news conference Thursday.  

Florida is one of 23 states plus Washington, D.C., that currently allow high school students without permanent legal status to have access to in-state tuition if they meet certain requirements. The law was signed in 2014 by then-Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who is now in the U.S. Senate — who, as we noted last week, said he’d sign it again. 

Latino evangelicals also are pushing back on DeSantis’ proposals, Alejandra Molina reports in Religion News Service. "Under these proposals, some pastors fear they can get arrested simply for serving immigrant communities," she writes. "Allowing politics to interfere in the decision-making of congregations [would be a] betrayal of the gospel," said Carlos Carbajal, pastor of an immigrant evangelical congregation in Miami. 

Meanwhile, in Texas, a newly proposed bill supported by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) would block undocumented children from attending public school unless the federal government pays, per Josephine Lee of the Texas Observer. 

Welcome to Friday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, Clara Villatoro and Katie Lutz. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

SMUGGLING SCHEME? — The Department of Homeland Security is collaborating with the Justice Department to determine "whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states," report Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler of NBC News. In The xxxxxx, our senior fellow Linda Chavez writes a powerful piece on why resources for migrant children and their sponsors, as well as accountability in government and among employers, are crucial.  

SERVE AND PROTECT — Two dozen bipartisan lawmakers in Wisconsin are pushing legislation to allow police and sheriff’s departments to hire Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, reports Rich Kremer of Wisconsin Public Radio.  Related: A new Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force blog post looks at other states’ efforts to allow noncitizen permanent residents to serve as departments face labor shortages. 

OVER 2 MILLION — Federal immigration judges are completing asylum cases faster than before, but backlogs continue to mount, reports Alicia A. Caldwell of The Wall Street Journal. Pending cases now top 2 million, per government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. 

HUMANITARIAN PAROLE LIMITS — President Biden’s immigration policies are temporarily allowing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Afghans, Venezuelans and others to stay in the U.S. via humanitarian parole, reports Stef W. Kight of Axios. But deadlines are approaching for many, leaving them uncertain of their future. (Paging Congress ...)  

Meanwhile, recent stories of local welcome have Georgia on our minds: 

• Click through and scroll down to read about nonprofit New American Pathways’ welcome of resettled Afghans, including helping "about 95% of refugees and parolees from the country achieve self-sufficiency." (Aaleah McConnell, Georgia Recorder)  
• Muzhda Oriakhil was pregnant when she arrived from Afghanistan. Now she’s a community engagement manager and Afghan community liaison for the Clarkston, Georgia, nonprofit Embrace Refugee Birth, "building relationships with Afghan women and connecting them to the resources and education they need to have safe, healthy pregnancies." (Ashley Edwards Walker, (Atlanta Magazine) 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan