The following includes news from over the holiday period. 

Migration News 

President Trump extends immigrant and work visa limits into Biden presidency
Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News
President Trump on Thursday extended a pandemic-era suspension of certain immigrant and work visas, ensuring that his sweeping limits on legal immigration will remain in place when Joe Biden is sworn in. Through a proclamation issued 20 days before Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump ordered a three-month extension of the visa restrictions, which were first enacted in April as a ban on some prospective immigrants and expanded in June to also halt several temporary work programs.

Undocumented immigrant children must be released promptly, court rules
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
Immigrant children caught crossing the border with their parents must be released to relatives or adult sponsors in the U.S. as soon as possible under a 1997 legal settlement, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, rejecting the Trump administration’s attempt to discard the agreement.

US citizen spouses and children of undocumented immigrants will finally get stimulus checks
Nicole Narea, Vox 
Many mixed-status households with undocumented family members are now eligible for stimulus checks under a $900 billion coronavirus relief package signed by President Donald Trump on Sunday night. Excluded from stimulus relief up until now, US citizens and permanent residents who filed a joint tax return with an undocumented spouse will receive a check for $600, as well as $600 per dependent child. The benefits phase out for individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000.

More immigrant women say they were abused by Ice gynecologist
Victoria Bekiempis, The Guardian 
More women have joined an official legal petition alleging that they were medically abused by a gynecologist while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody in a move that significantly expands a case that has shocked America. The legal petition outlining these alleged abuses was filed in the middle district of Georgia federal court late Monday night. More than 40 women have submitted written testimony attesting to claims of abuse, one attorney on their case said.

Cuban migrants protest at Mexico border, seeking entry to U.S.
Jose Luis Gonzalez, Reuters 
Dozens of Cubans protested at the U.S. border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday night, demanding they be allowed to cross and claim asylum in the United States. U.S. authorities, including police in anti-riot gear, closed off the bridge that leads into El Paso, Texas, with a concrete barrier topped with barbed wire. A recording blared from a loudspeaker warning that any person who crossed could be arrested. Late into the evening, some 200 migrants who had walked right up to the barrier stayed put.

Trump can bar immigrants who can’t afford health insurance, court rules
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle 
President Trump has the power to bar immigrants from the U.S. who cannot afford private health insurance, a ban that would affect as many as 375,000 people a year, a federal appeals court has ruled. Trump has already denied legal status and work permits to immigrants who accept public benefits, such as food stamps or Medicaid. Thursday’s court ruling involved his October 2019 proclamation denying visas to immigrants who did not have health insurance and could not show that they would obtain it within 30 days of entering the country. Immigrants could receive Medicare and be allowed to remain, but those who planned to obtain coverage under the low-income Medicaid program or the government-subsidized Affordable Care Act would not be eligible. Advocates for immigrants say Trump’s proclamation would bar entry to nearly two-thirds of all otherwise legal migrants, those who obtain their entry visas from employers, U.S. relatives or an annual lottery.

CITING THE PANDEMIC, CBP HAS EXPELLED NEWBORN U.S. CITIZENS WITH THEIR MIGRANT MOTHERS
Felipe De La Hoz, The Intercept 
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has used a controversial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order authorizing the expulsion of asylum-seekers on supposed public health grounds to send multiple U.S.-born infants — who are by law U.S. citizens — and their migrant families across the southern border to Mexico. In interviews with The Intercept, three asylum-seeking mothers who crossed the border while pregnant described giving birth in U.S. hospitals, only to be swiftly sent back under false pretenses and without an evaluation of their particular humanitarian circumstances or claims of danger. None immediately received citizenship paperwork for their infants, and they are unsure if and when they’ll be allowed to tender an asylum claim.

Immigrant Advocates Vow To Keep Up The Pressure As Biden Asks For Patience
Joel Rose, NPR 
Immigrant advocates, eager to break with four years of Trump administration policies, are raising concerns about President-elect Joe Biden's plan to move cautiously to avoid making matters worse. While still publicly supporting the Biden transition team, they're imploring the incoming administration to move with urgency.

Deportations of migrant families spiked in 2020
Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post 
Federal immigration officials deported about 14,500 migrant family members in fiscal year 2020, returning more parents and children in a single year than they did during the first three years of President Trump’s term combined, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s annual report released Wednesday. A top federal official said the deportations rose because El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala agreed to more quickly help with the repatriation of their citizens in the past fiscal year, which ran from October 2019 through September 2020. Officials had deported a total of more than 10,700 parents and children — known as “family unit” members — during the previous three fiscal years.

Worth a Read 

A Far-Right Terrorism Suspect With a Refugee Disguise: The Tale of Franco A.
The New York Times 

Trump’s new citizenship test more difficult, tilts in a conservative direction
San Francisco Chronicle

HOW IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES BEAT BACK ICE AND HELPED FLIP GEORGIA
The Appeal 

This Is Not Our First Holiday Season Away From Our Families
Medium 

To stay or go?
The Washington Post 

Covid: France rewards frontline immigrant workers with citizenship
BBC

Biden team prepares to revamp the US refugee admissions program
CNN

The U.S. asylum system is broken. How could it be reimagined?
The San Diego Union-Tribune