"[The] Government must regulate the border and guarantee the rights of asylum seekers and all vulnerable migrants. Policies that fail to secure protections for the vulnerable are morally deficient. Death simply cannot be an acceptable part of the overhead costs of our immigration policies," Seitz writes. 

"The new policy will increase burdens on neighboring countries, like Mexico, that are already wrestling with displacement due to violence and instability."  

Our policy expert Arturo Castellanos-Canales just published a paper that details the challenges that migrants may face if attempting to seek asylum in Mexico, due to a massive asylum backlog, limited offices and capacity, and the country’s economic and demographic circumstances. 

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

HEALTHIER DIALOGUE — There are different ways to measure the health of our immigration system beyond border apprehension levels, writes Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in an op-ed for The New York Times. "A system that cared about maximizing orderly asylum claims would focus on scaling up the capacity at ports of entry to conduct orderly asylum interviews … A system that cared primarily about processing people quickly and safely would invest in facilities to house them that weren’t effectively jails," she writes. Related: Read our policy paper on building a healthier border dialogue. 

APP CONCERNS — A group of 35 House Democrats sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday to "take immediate steps to resolve the serious equity and accessibility issues migrants are facing" of the CBP One app, per Suzanne Monyak of Roll Call. 

STATE BILLS — In the first committee hearing today, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ House and Senate bills do not include the repeal of a 2014 state law permitting in-state tuition fee waivers for undocumented immigrant students, per Mitch Perry of the Florida Phoenix. Over in New Mexico, legislators rejected a proposal Tuesday to prohibit state and local government agencies from contracting with ICE to detain immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S., per Morgan Lee of the Associated Press. 

A NEW FOCUS — The number of undocumented immigrants who were convicted of a crime and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has dropped significantly during the Biden administration, per Adam Shaw of Fox News. An ICE explanatory note said the agency is taking actions "to reduce factors that detract from removal performance." These actions include increasing levels of cooperation from foreign countries and the frequency of transport for detainees where possible.  

Thanks for reading, 

Clara  

P.S. Meet 63-year-old Jin Woo Nam, who will be at sea from Marina del Rey to Honolulu to Incheon, "retracing in reverse the journey of the first Korean immigrants 120 years ago." Jeong Park of the Los Angeles Times has the story.