Migration News

Refugee Flights Canceled as Biden Fails to Lift Trump Cutback
Miriam Jordan, The New York Times
More than 715 refugees from around the world who expected to start new lives in the United States have had their flights canceled in recent weeks because President Biden has postponed an overhaul of his predecessor’s sharp limits on new refugee admissions. Agencies that assist refugees poised to enter the country were notified by the State Department this week that all travel would be suspended until the president sets a new target for admissions this year. Each year, the president must set a cap on the number of refugees that the United States will admit. Former President Donald J. Trump lowered that number to a historic low of 15,000 for the current fiscal year and placed new restrictions that effectively excluded most applicants from Muslim and African countries.

House to take up immigration reform bills amid border crisis
Benjamin Siegel, ABC News
The House will vote this week to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children and provide legal status to farm workers. These will be the first immigration reform measures taken up by Congress this year. The votes could serve as the first barometer of the chances for comprehensive immigration reform in this session of Congress. A bipartisan agreement has remained elusive to lawmakers and presidents of both parties after nearly a decade of half-starts and broken-down negotiations.

Private Companies Maneuvering to Cash in on Biden’s Child Migrant Detention
John Washington, The Intercept
The influx of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border over the last three months is focusing attention — and criticism — on the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Even as officials claim that they are processing and releasing children as quickly as possible, a bottleneck has kept thousands of children in Border Patrol custody longer than the court-mandated maximum 72 hours, with more than 100 kids held for more than 10 days, sometimes in harsh conditions. The influx has reached a level where Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to, as a Homeland Security statement put it, “look at every available option to quickly expand physical capacity for appropriate lodging.”

FEMA deployed to help process migrant children amid overcrowding in border facilities
Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News
The Biden administration on Saturday instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help process the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children entering U.S. border custody amid reports of overcrowding in holding facilities. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced he has ordered FEMA to help U.S. immigration officials receive and shelter migrant minors crossing the southern border without parents or legal guardians for the next 90 days.

Immigrant crime victims hope for change to visas under Biden
Marc Levy, Associated Press/ConchoValleyHomepage.com
In a bid to become a legal permanent resident of the United States, she says she lives in fear, afraid both of being deported and of retribution after she testified against men who were convicted of killing her boyfriend. Robbers forced her and her boyfriend to lay on the floor of his Philadelphia rowhouse, she testified, and after searching the house for cash he made selling drugs, shot him point-blank in the head. Even after that horror, the woman, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said bearing the fear is worth it. That’s because in the U.S. — where she overstayed a visitor’s visa 20 years ago to escape civil war in her native Liberia — she can work and send money back to her son.

House GOP Leader Blasts Biden At Southern Border As Democrats Ready Immigration Bills
Barbara Sprunt, NPR
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy dubbed the surge in migrants showing up at the U.S. southern border, especially unaccompanied children, the "Biden border crisis" during a trip to Texas with a delegation of Republican lawmakers. "It's more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak," McCarthy said at a press conference on Monday after a tour of the El Paso Processing Center. "This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration." McCarthy said border patrol agents told him sheltering facilities are quickly reaching capacity and the number of migrants is "growing exponentially every day."

Further Reading

Immigrant Peter O’Brien, who always took care of others, dead at 91
Chicago Sun Times

NJ Elected Officials Join Fight to End Hudson County ICE Contract
Documented

‘Kids in cages’ is a distraction. The real problem is a lack of migrant housing.
The Washington Post

On Mexico’s Border With U.S., Desperation as Migrant Traffic Piles Up
The New York Times

How new immigration legislation would fit into an already complex system
The Washington Post

Opinion: Arizona’s GOP-led Senate just granted a surprising win to undocumented residents
The Washington Post