Immigration in the News 2/15/2021
Trouble brewing at the border, unpopular executive orders, GAO report on immigration detention
Commentary
After a big round of executive orders last week the Biden folks seem to be getting down to business, reflected in a large amount of DHS coverage in this edition. Generally speaking the attitude toward the new regime at the immigration-related agencies is aligned with their basic function: ICE and CBP seem to be reacting quite negatively to the proposed changes (in their role as enforcement) while Department of State and USCIS personnel are cautiously optimistic that a return to a more normal operating tempo will improve their working conditions. The Department of State is still reeling from COVID related uncertainties that may only get a small reprieve as the developed countries’ vaccination efforts ramp up. USCIS, on the other hand, will probably return to something similar to normality and begin chipping away at their processing times in the near future.
It’s too soon to tell what will happen in Congress on the immigration front, the language of the immigration bill is not yet public, to my knowledge, and the usual factions are already positioning themselves to reap concessions or insert their preferred policy objectives. As has been stated several times in this newsletter, the fundamental question of whether we will see a big “CIR” bill or a piecemeal approach will be the first indicator of how this will play out.
CBP had a big win in court this week on their ability to do searches during border crossings so journalists covering border regions and CBP should probably brush up on their data security techniques and plan accordingly.
There are also some comments below regarding specific stories of interest or recommendations. Going forward if there are any stories you would like to see featured here please reach out via email at immiwonk@gmail.com or shoot us a DM on Twitter at @immiwonk. Thanks for reading!
Big Topics this Week:
Immigrant flows at the border
Executive Order and immigration plan backlash
Undocumented Immigrants
Department of Homeland Security/Department of State
Refugee and Asylum Policy
Chinese Police Access To U.S. And Other Foreign Immigration Documents Raises Concerns
The documents of immigrants to the United States from China could be under surveillance by Beijing Police according to a recent Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper report. The article indicated that Chinese police own a company that collects details of people applying for visas to numerous countries, including the United States, thereby giving Beijing security services direct access to private information of people planning to leave China. The implications of this Chinese police access could be far reaching.
This is an important story. I can confirm that Canada, the U.K., Germany, Australia, Japan, and South Korea all use Chinese companies and in some cases the Chinese Foreign Affairs Office Consular Division as acceptance agents for many visa applications. While this is not a totally unheard-of practice elsewhere it obviously raises important privacy questions in the context of China, especially when you consider that many asylum applications are filed by Chinese citizens upon arrival in their destination countries (meaning that they filed for a normal visa of some type in order to exit China).
One should also note that aside from this arrangement the Chinese government has many other ways to identify those who are in the process of receiving a foreign visa, as it is likely they have access to data from other service providers such as Chinese banks which provide fee handling services under contract to foreign consulates and embassies.
Immigrant Flows
Border arrests rose in January, in latest sign of migration wave that could test Biden
Economic hardships in Central America triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters have fueled a growing migration wave that gathered steam last spring and has accelerated markedly in recent weeks, statistics show. The influx could test Biden’s plans to repudiate his predecessor’s immigration policies and make the United States more welcoming to asylum seekers and refugees.
In Biden’s early days, signs of Trump-era problems at border
Larger numbers of immigrant families have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the first weeks of President Joe Biden’s administration. Warning signs are emerging of the border crises that marked former President Donald Trump’s term: Hundreds of newly released immigrants are getting dropped off with nonprofit groups, sometimes unexpectedly, and accounts like Nailet’s of prolonged detention in short-term facilities are growing.
Biden faces border challenge as migrant families arrive in greater numbers and large groups
Republican critics of Biden say the new wave is the start of the crisis they have long predicted, invited by the new administration’s eager rejection of Trump’s deterrent approach. Yet Biden also inherited a highly improvised enforcement system from his predecessor that was already under strain and highly dependent on Trump’s diplomatic bullying of Mexico.
2 Texas facilities being readied for anticipated wave of migrants and teens, officials say
This is the same facility that opened in July 2019 by the Trump administration but was operational for only a couple of weeks prior to being shut down. Now, HHS officials say that due to social distancing requirements, there is a lack of adequate space available nationwide to house all anticipated unaccompanied migrant youth — officially called unaccompanied alien children (UACs). HHS officials said they are reactivating this site as a temporary holding facility to meet the needs.
The Trauma of Being Stuck at the US-Mexico Border
Santiago is among thousands of children and adults stuck in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as MPP, one of former President Donald Trump’s hallmark anti-immigration policies. It requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their case is processed in the United States. In theory, that was supposed to take a year at most. In practice, it’s dragging on closer to two.
We talked about this a bit last week, and it will probably be a recurring theme over the next few years. As disappointing as it may be to see the apprehension and detainment apparatus getting spun up again, there may be little choice in the short term if numbers surge as predicted.
EO and Immigration Plan backlash
‘It would be very difficult’: Dems prepare for heartburn over Biden immigration plan
But Democratic veterans say they learned from the party's big immigration letdown in 2009, the last time it held all levers of power. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said he remembered then-President Barack Obama telling the Congressional Hispanic Caucus about his overhaul plans in April that year. The Blue Dog Democrat then leaned over to a colleague and whispered, “It ain’t gonna happen."
Monthly apprehensions at the border dropped to 17,000 in March as Title 42 went into effect but has increased monthly and hit 70,000 apprehensions in December. January statistics have not been released, though former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told the Washington Examiner last week that approximately 3,000 people were being apprehended daily during a three-week period in January, which would put agents on track to have apprehended 90,000 people last month.
Seeing the predictable cowardice from Congress on immigration once again. God forbid someone doesn’t get reelected.
Undocumented Immigrants
Without citizenship, many Latinos in this Atlanta suburb stay silent
Barely half of Doraville’s households filled out U.S. Census forms last year, a gap that the mayor said could cost the city “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in government money that is divided up by population. Because undocumented immigrants are ineligible for driver’s licenses, many pay for taxis or walk most places — and Doraville has had one of the state’s highest rates of crashes, injuries and deaths involving pedestrians.
Biden to review deportations of veterans, military family that occurred under Trump
For service members and veterans, Trump’s stricter policies at times led to immigrant soldiers or veterans having their naturalization applications denied at a higher rate than civilians not in the military, although by mid-2020 military naturalization approval rates had improved. Those policies also led to deportations of some veterans or family members of currently serving military personnel.
After Years in Limbo, NYC Immigrants See Hope in Biden Plan to Help Make Temporary Stays Permanent
An estimated 12,500 TPS holders are employed as essential workers in New York, according to the Center for American Progress. Many originally from El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras work as home health aides, grocery store workers and in other key jobs.
Outcry as more than 20 babies and children deported by US to Haiti
The expulsions were carried out under a 77-year-old public health statute, called Title 42, first invoked by the Trump administration after the start of the coronavirus outbreak. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that policy would continue for new arrivals at the border, until there had been a review and facilities for housing migrants had been restored.
Collectively it’s good to see things like TPS holders and deported veterans getting a look, these are often areas that are a bit obscure for mainstream debate. Deportations are a sore spot after the pledges made during the election, but court challenges are making it difficult to deliver on that promise.
DHS and DOS
New Biden rules for ICE point to fewer arrests and deportations, and a more restrained agency
Measuring ICE’s performance according to the number of arrests and deportations, as Trump did, is “not a recipe for good law enforcement,” he said. “It’s a recipe for jacking up stats with the low-hanging fruit of the law enforcement system.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Actions Needed to Improve Planning, Documentation, and Oversight of Detention Facility Contracts
ICE relies on Contracting Officer's Representatives (COR) to oversee detention contracts and agreements, but the COR's supervisory structure—where field office management, rather than headquarters, oversee COR work and assess COR performance—does not provide sufficient independence for effective oversight. CORs in eight of 12 field offices identified concerns including lacking resources or support, as well as supervisors limiting their ability to use contract enforcement tools and bypassing CORs' oversight responsibilities in contracting matters. Revising its supervisory structure could help ICE ensure that detention contract and agreement terms are enforced.
ICE THREATENED TO EXPOSE ASYLUM-SEEKERS TO COVID-19 IF THEY DID NOT ACCEPT DEPORTATION
As part of the same rush to continue deportations, Jusiel Mendez, a Cuban asylum-seeker being held in Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, said that this week he and a group of other Cuban asylum-seekers were also being threatened with exposure to Covid-19 if they didn’t sign their deportation orders. Mendez told The Intercept that a ranking official at Etowah, who he called a “captain,” threatened to expose the group to the virus.
Harvard’s Cass Sunstein joins Biden’s DHS to shape immigration rules
Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard University, was administrator of President Barack Obama’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009 to 2012. His work with Biden dates back three decades to when Biden was the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Commission and Sunstein weighed in on judicial nominations and constitutional interpretation.
A Tucson Man Shot by a Border Officer While Entering Mexico Has Filed a Lawsuit Against DHS
The lawyer said one reason for the shooting may simply be that border officers don't think rules apply to them.
"They are assholes. They go to asshole school," he said. He's been crossing the border for 60 years and has a "deep history on this."
Nogales officers are "just pricks," Risner said. "They're insolent. Just fucking pricks."
Undoing Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Policies Will Mean Looking at the Fine Print
“Reform means uprooting the tentacles of every policy and undoing every last vestige of the Trump-Miller agenda,” Mr. Guttentag said. “They can be buried under layer after layer of bureaucratic actions and then essentially devastate the system in untold ways that aren’t discovered until policies are applied in particular cases.”
They see one man's death as an urgent reminder of what Biden needs to do
Growing government use of private prisons has sparked debate for years. And in 2016, the Justice Department announced it was "beginning the process of reducing -- and ultimately ending" the use of privately operated prisons, stating they don't meet the same level of safety and security as government facilities. That policy shift was quickly rescinded after President Trump took office.
USCIS Taking Two Years To Process Many Applications For H-1B Spouses
The wait times for H-4 EADS grew after USCIS changed its policies, including requiring H-4 spouses to supply biometrics. The plaintiffs in Kolluri v. USCIS charged the new policy to supply biometrics was to make it more difficult for the spouses of H-1B visa holders to retain their work authorization. “On March 30, 2019, the Agency’s Senior Policy Council determined it would begin collecting biometrics for H-4 extension applications filed on Form I-539,” according to the plaintiffs. “This change exploded Form I-539 processing times from an . . . average of 3.77 months.”
H-1B: Plan to ban tens of thousands of H-4 visa spouses from work is killed by Biden administration
However, H-4 spouses remain the subject of a long-running federal lawsuit filed by a group of technology workers. Those workers claim they were laid off after training their own H-1B replacements and allege that H-4 holders unfairly compete for jobs against U.S. workers and shouldn’t be allowed to work.
ALASAAD et. al v. Mayorkas - CBP border searches back on
We acknowledge that our holdings on both of these points
are contrary to the Ninth Circuit's holdings in United States v.
Cano. 934 F.3d at 1018 (holding that the border search exception
"is restricted in scope to searches for contraband"). We cannot
agree with its narrow view of the border search exception because
Cano fails to appreciate the full range of justifications for the
border search exception beyond the prevention of contraband itself
entering the country. Advanced border searches of electronic
devices may be used to search for contraband, evidence of
contraband, or for evidence of activity in violation of the laws
enforced or administered by CBP or ICE.
Immigrant groups and attorneys claimed the changes were part of the Trump administration’s overall effort to restrict immigration and curtail the number of people able to gain citizenship. Agency officials, however, said it was part of a process to update the questions to prepare immigrants to become US citizens.
Flurry of activity as the new administration executes a lot of pre-planned initiatives to roll back Trump-era regulations. Mostly low-hanging fruit so far, though.
Refugee and Asylum Policy
Biden’s Move to Expand Refugee Admissions Is His Most Unpopular Executive Action So Far
A new Morning Consult/Politico survey shows 48 percent of voters oppose Biden’s plan to allow as many as 125,000 refugees to seek safe haven in the United States during the upcoming fiscal year — a historic high that represents a whiplash change from the historically low 15,000-person limit for the current fiscal year — and fewer than 2 in 5 voters support it. That makes the Feb. 4 order the least popular of 28 executive actions tracked by Morning Consult since Inauguration Day by a wide margin.
Factbox: What Biden is doing to bring more refugees into the U.S.
Other refugee populations mentioned in Biden’s proposal are those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Uighur Muslims from China and residents of Hong Kong. In the Western Hemisphere, the plan cites refugees from Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, among other nations.
The poll result is worrying, though not reflective of a broad set of data at this point. The refugee issue may need a little selling to the public to get people on board. This is where a big Obama-style “this is who we are” speech might actually help a bit. If the administration doesn’t spend some time talking about this they cede the narrative to nativists, who will be looking at this type of poll with keen interest.