Migration News

Young Migrants Crowd Shelters, Posing Test for Biden
Michael D. Shear, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Eileen Sullivan, The New York Times
The desperate plea landed this week in the email inboxes of employees in government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and NASA: Will you consider taking a four-month paid leave from your job to help care for migrant children in government-run shelters packed with new arrivals at the border? The request to much of the federal work force came from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is at the heart of a frantic effort by the Biden administration to keep up with a surge in young people crossing the southwestern border hoping to reunite with relatives already in the United States.

Biden set to accept fewest refugees of any modern president, including Trump, report says
Amy B Wang, The Washington Post
Since his days on the campaign trail, President Biden has tried to cast himself as diametrically opposed to President Donald Trump when it comes to welcoming refugees into the United States. Within two weeks of taking office, Biden signed an executive order to rebuild and enhance federal programs to resettle refugees — programs he said had been “badly damaged” under the Trump administration. Biden also revoked some restrictive immigration policies Trump had put in place, including ones that sought to ban refugees from certain countries. In February, Biden announced he was raising the annual cap on refugee admissions to 125,000 for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, up from Trump’s historically low limit of 15,000.

Pressure builds on Biden administration to lift refugee cap after months-long delay
Priscilla Alvarez, Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood, CNN
In his first days in office, President Joe Biden proposed expanding the number of refugees who could be admitted to the United States after years of historic lows, but more than two months later that increase remains unsigned despite Biden's pledge, perplexing even officials within his own administration and frustrating allies on Capitol Hill. "It's a mystery as to why it hasn't been signed," an administration official told CNN. In February, the administration proposed raising the year's refugee cap -- which dictates how many refugees can be admitted to the US -- to 62,500, a significant increase from former President Donald Trump's 15,000. Shortly afterward, the relevant department secretaries, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, briefed lawmakers on the plan -- a necessary step in the process.

Biden to name nominees to lead two key immigration agencies
Priscilla Alvarez, Kevin Liptak and Geneva Sands, CNN
President Joe Biden plans to nominate Tucson, Arizona, police chief Chris Magnus to serve as commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection and Ur Jaddou to serve as director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to four sources familiar with the selections. Jaddou has been widely speculated as the incoming head of USCIS, which oversees the US legal immigration system. She was formerly chief counsel at the agency under President Barack Obama and led the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security transition review team.

Mexican migrant deaths in the U.S. have surged during the pandemic. Getting bodies home is a challenge.
Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post
The calls keep coming. A farmworker from Oaxaca dead in Florida. A construction worker from Zacatecas in Los Angeles. A housekeeper from Puebla in New York. For more than a year, Mexican consulates across the United States have catalogued the toll the coronavirus has taken on America’s migrant workforce, one desperate phone conversation at a time. Thousands of Mexicans in the United States, most of them undocumented immigrants deemed “essential workers” by state labor departments, have died of covid-19. By one measure, the community’s death rate soared by nearly 70 percent.

Up to 100 new immigration judges would be added under Biden budget request
Ariana Figueroa, Wisconsin Examiner
The Biden administration on Friday released a budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year that would increase the number of immigration judges and allocate millions in funding to clear backlogs of hearings and asylum requests. The administration is grappling with an influx of asylum seekers at the Southern border after inheriting a gutted immigration system from the Trump administration. Boosted funding for immigration programs, aid and reform in the budget request spans several agencies such as the Department of Human and Health Services, Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

EXCLUSIVE: Biden's DHS chief vows to defend ICE, battle sanctuary cities
Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times 
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says he’s preparing to take on sanctuary cities that refuse to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he wants to see more illegal immigrants face criminal prosecution for jumping the border. He also rejected abolishing or splitting up ICE, rejecting calls from some in President Biden’s political base to eliminate the government’s deportation agents altogether. Mr. Mayorkas revealed the hard-line stances last week during a virtual town hall forum with ICE employees. The Washington Times has reviewed notes of the conversation, in which Mr. Mayorkas said he’s working on a new set of deportation guidelines to govern how and when officers can arrest and attempt to deport illegal immigrants.

Iowa City Catholic Worker House wants Iowa to accept migrant children
Phil Reed, KCRG
Members of the Iowa City Catholic Worker House say they are disappointed in Governor Kim Reynolds for rejecting a federal request to accept migrants in Iowa. The Governor saying last week that the state didn’t have the facilities to house migrant children, and calling the need to find them a home the President’s problem. This comes as US Customs and Border Protection reports nearly 19-thousand unaccompanied children arriving at the border in March. Juana Cuyuch Brito made it to Iowa from Guatemala, but now she waits for her 16-year-old sister, Lidia, who’s at the border. “I don’t know whose hands she’s in,” she said. “Who’s taking care of her, or what’s going on.”

Macs book sale raised funds for asylum seekers living in the community
Terry Collins, Central Coast Community News
A book sale at Macmasters Beach held on Easter Saturday has raised more than $1,800 for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). The organisation provides aid, justice and empowerment programs to over 1,000 asylum seekers living in the community seeking refugee protection. It is run by a team of volunteers and paid staff. Macs resident Kathy King, who put the organisation forward as the recipient of the book sale funds, said with asylum seekers and refugees receiving minimal government help, she felt supporting the ASRC was extremely important on compassionate grounds.

Digging Deeper: Madison refugee resettlement grinds to a halt as Biden delays new plan
WKOW
On the campaign trail and after taking office, President Joe Biden said he was going to raise the cap on the number of refugees allowed to come to the U.S. each year. At first, refugee resettlement agencies were hopeful and excited. But two-and-a-half months into his term, they're starting to get frustrated because little has changed. Before President Donald Trump left office, he set the cap for the 2021 fiscal year at 15,000 refugees. Biden has said he'll raise it to 62,500. But to do that, he needs to issue a presidential determination. "That hasn't happened," Dawn Berney, the executive director of Jewish Social Services of Madison, said Saturday. "Until that happens and the quotas are changed, the folks who are supposed to be coming are not eligible to come to the United States."

Further Reading

Letter to Birdland | An immigrant's tale
Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

Book Review: Debut explores the chaos of asylum, inherited trauma
Atlanta Journal Constitution

Latina Workers Formed NYC’s First Laundromat Union. Then They Were Fired.
Documented