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February 11, 2021
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Migration News: February 11, 2021
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Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News – Special LIRS mention!
As part of its overhaul of U.S. refugee policy, the Biden administration is planning to offer humanitarian refuge to more children fleeing violence around the world, according to a government report obtained by CBS News. The report, prepared by the State Department to notify the House and Senate Judiciary Committees of President Biden's proposal to increase admissions of refugees, committed the U.S. to resettling more unaccompanied refugee minors going forward. Arrivals of these refugee children, who don't have parents or legal guardians who can care for them, decreased sharply during the Trump administration — and were effectively halted this fiscal year.
Victoria Albert and Luis Giraldo, CBS News
A "heartbreaking" 911 call from a man who said he and approximately 80 other migrants were trapped in the back of a tanker truck and struggling to breathe has prompted a massive search in the San Antonio, Texas, area, the Bexar County sheriff told CBS News on Wednesday. At approximately 10 p.m. on February 8, a man called 911 and told the dispatcher that he and other undocumented migrants were trapped, according to a recording of the call obtained by CBS News.
Adolfo Flores and Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News
After days of confusion about changes along the southern border, the Biden administration on Wednesday said immigrants should not try to enter the US because most will still be turned away under a Trump-era policy that has recently come under legal scrutiny. Since March, border officials have used a section of the public health code known as Title 42 to immediately turn back immigrants at the border in order to halt the spread of the coronavirus. It was a massive shift in how the US treated immigrants and effectively sealed off the border to asylum-seekers. Despite hopes among activists that President Joe Biden would change course, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday told reporters that "the vast majority" of immigrants will continue to be expelled at the border.
Erin Snodgrass, Business Insider
In a move likely to please the immigration community, the Biden Administration is expected to name a refugee advocate as executive director of the task force charged with reunifying migrant families that were split up under former President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" family separation policy, according to NBC News. Sources told the outlet that if chosen, Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights and justice programs at the Women's Refugee Commission, would oversee the task force's day-to-day operations as it works to reunite nearly 550 children who were separated from their parents at the US southern border under the Trump Administration in 2018 and in pilot programs preceding the short-lived policy's implementation.
Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
In recent weeks, migrants waiting in various northern Mexican cities have been told to travel to other locations along the border under the false pretense that they'll be let into the US through a port of entry there, immigration attorneys tell CNN. Other messages, shared via the popular messaging app WhatsApp, have falsely told migrants who fall under the Trump administration's so-called "remain in Mexico" policy that they'll be allowed to enter the US on a certain date and directed them to present themselves to border officials on that date.
Reuters/Voices of America
The United Nations Refugee Agency has held initial talks with U.S. President Joe Biden's administration about Central American asylum claimants being processed in their own countries, but it is too early to estimate how many people could benefit from the policy, agency head Filippo Grandi said on Tuesday.
The Biden administration has already said it plans to restore a program which allows certain children in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to apply for refugee status in the United States from home.
Esmy Jimenez, OPB News
The Cowlitz County Youth Services Center in Longview, near the Oregon border has contracted with ICE to hold immigrant youth since 2001. The County collects $170 per day per youth, according to public documents. Officials with Cowlitz Youth Services Center said in a news release, “Due to the increased lengths of stay not suited for our short-term facility, and because it’s clear the legislature intended to end contracts of this nature within our state, Cowlitz County Superior Court has notified ICE of our intention to terminate the contract.”
Nick Miroff, The Washington Post
U.S. authorities made nearly 78,000 arrests and detentions along the border with Mexico in January — the highest number for that month in at least a decade and more than double the amount from a year earlier — a sign of the immediate challenge President Biden will face as he attempts to undo the policies of former president Donald Trump. The number of apprehensions has been growing since Biden took office, according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, and rose 6 percent between December and January, a period that typically brings a holiday lull.
Biden Is Planning To Bring Back Immigrants Who Were Forced To Wait In Dangerous Mexican Border Towns
Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News
Immigrants who were forced by former president Donald Trump to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico while they tried to gain asylum will soon start being allowed to enter the US at certain ports as the Biden administration attempts to wind down the controversial policy, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The unprecedented effort, which is expected to be rolled out within the next two weeks, is the beginning of President Joe Biden’s promise to end the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy — formally known as the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP). The policy led to tens of thousands of asylum-seekers being forced to stay in Mexico as they waited for their day in a US court. Often left with nowhere to go but squalid camps in Mexican border towns, human rights advocates reported cases of the immigrants being kidnapped, raped, and tortured.
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