Dear readers,

Welcome to our weekly newsletter on global migration policy, with a U.S. focus. 

Did you get this from a friend? You can subscribe here. Want to view past issues? Here's a list. Have a comment, suggestion or story we should include next week? Email us. 

Many thanks,
Tania & Lolita

U.S. (Im)migration News

TPS holders get a temporary reprieve: A federal judge has halted the Trump administration’s plan to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 nationals of El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, many of whom have been living in the U.S. for decades (Politico). In his ruling, Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco wrote that TPS holders and their children “indisputably will suffer irreparable harm and great hardship” if forced to leave the country. He also wrote the Trump administration may have unconstitutionally based its decision to terminate the status on “animus against non-white, non-European immigrants” (USA Today). Internal government memos and emails revealed that the government struggled to articulate why humanitarian protections for the four countries were no longer necessary (Los Angeles Times).

The ruling in Ramos v. Nielsen is a preliminary injunction, meaning the Department of Homeland Security must keep TPS in place for these countries until Chen issues a final decision. It’s also the latest in a string of judicial setbacks for the Trump administration’s immigration policies (The Hill). “At some point, it’s likely that the TPS case will make its way to the Supreme Court, where the administration will likely prevail — if it has appointed a conservative justice by then,” writes Vox’s Dara Lind. 

What we’re watching:

• Migrant kids & tent cities: Hundreds of migrant children in shelters across the U.S. have been roused in the middle of the night and transported to a remote, barren tent city in western Texas, The New York Times reported Sunday. It’s part of a mass reshuffling as the government struggles to find room for 13,000 detained migrant children, the largest population ever and a fivefold increase since last year. The transfers are carried out at night, with little notice, “because children will be less likely to try to run away,” shelter workers said. Advocates say the children describe it as “punishment” (Huffington Post).

• “Zero tolerance” gets an audit: A new audit by DHS’s internal watchdog confirms what news reports already showed: The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy was plagued from the start by lack of preparation and communication failures (Washington Post). Among the findings: Children were held longer than the three-day limit allowed at Border Patrol facilities, including one who was held 25 days (Reuters); The practice of regulating how many people could cross legally — known as “metering” — likely pushed migrants to cross the border illegally (BuzzFeed News, Intercept); and DHS falsely claimed there was a “central database” to keep track of separated parents and children (Bloomberg).

• Immigration judges push back on quotas: Immigration judges and their advocates renew calls to Congress to create an independent immigration court, free from the U.S. Attorney General’s reach (Immigration Impact The Hill). The urgency stems from The Justice Department’s new quotas, which went into effect Oct. 1, requiring immigration judges to finish 700 cases per year — about three per day — or face disciplinary action (Arizona Republic).

What we're reading:

• Los Angeles Times: Nooses made of bedsheets, rotting teeth among many “health and safety” problems a government audit found at a California immigration detention facility.
• Forbes: Proposed “public charge” rule change could make it harder for U.S. employers to bring in highly skilled workers on H1-B visas or extend status of existing immigrant employees.
• Washington Post: Migration surge from Central America’s Northern Triangle countries has worsened under Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
• Texas Tribune: Critics say new physical barriers on border bridges are meant to deter migrants from stepping onto American soil to seek asylum.
• Documented & WNYC : If New Jersey county cancels its ICE contract, immigrant detainees in New York may be relocated to faraway facilities, stunting their legal cases.
• Kaiser Health News: Immigrants paid out $25 billion more into healthcare system in 2014 than was paid out on their behalf, study shows.
• The Atlantic: Trump’s lower refugee ceiling hurts Christians, too: Only 70 were admitted from the Middle East in fiscal year 2018.
• BuzzFeed News: Migrant workers called 911 during Hurricane Florence, but no one came to their rescue.
• Los Angeles Times: Iranian refugee promised U.S. resettlement dies waiting amid bureaucratic delays.
• VICE News: Leaked report shows dysfunction of Baltimore's severely understaffed immigration court.
• NPR (listen): 13,500 immigrants, mostly Chinese, who were granted asylum in the U.S. years ago face possible deportation due to a 2012 investigation into asylum mills.
• Miami Herald: Arrests of immigrants with old deportation orders are becoming more common during USCIS marriage interviews in South Florida.
• The New York Times (report): Detaining immigrants is big business for privately run prisons and have become the U.S. government’s default detention centers.

Spotlight: Venezuela's Exodus

Latin America is still grappling with how to handle the migrant exodus spurred by Venezuela’s political and economic crisis. Nearly 2 million people have fled since 2015, the UN said this week, at a rate that has reached 5,000 each day (The Guardian). Colombia has taken in more than 1 million, the most of any single country, and President Ivan Duque says the crisis is costing Colombia about 0.5 percent of its GDP (AFP). For more, read:

• Bloomberg: Venezuelan refugees send billions home in remittances, helping the lucky survive.
• Refugees Deeply (opinion): Why Latin America should treat Venezuelans as refugees.
• Reuters: Among those fleeing are Venezuelans with HIV who can no longer get treatment amid drug and doctor shortages.
• IRIN: Local aid groups in Caribbean jump in to help surge of Venezuelans.
• Stateline: In U.S., Venezuelan migrants get Trump’s sympathy but no legal status.

What we’re reading:

• The Washington Post: An Italian mayor saved his depopulated, poor village by bringing in migrants and refugees. Now, he’s been arrested for “aiding and abetting” illegal migration.
• Human Rights Watch: India under fire for deporting seven Rohingya Muslims back to Myanmar.
• AFP: Bangladesh delays plans to shift Rohingya refugees to remote, uninhabited island.
• The Guardian (opinion): Libya is a war zone. Why is the EU sending refugees back there?
• Al Jazeera English: 60 migrants feared dead in shipwreck off Guinea-Bissau.
• Reuters: 34 migrants drown, 26 survive in western Mediterranean shipwreck.
• Al Jazeera English (watch): 1 million internally displaced Yemenis on brink of famine as aid groups struggle to reach them.  
• The Guardian: Australia spent $320,000 last year fighting urgent medical transfer requests of refugees and asylum-seekers on Nauru and Manus Island.
• Politico Europe: Theresa May unveils new UK immigration system designed to cut low-skilled migration from EU.
• Huffington Post UK: UK’s rejection of child asylum-seekers was unlawful, court rules.
• Deutshe Welle (listen): Germany reaches deal on immigration law to fill labor shortages and stabilize public pension system.
• BBC: Syrian man arrested after seven months living in limbo in Malaysian airport; could be forcibly deported to Syria.
• Refugees Deeply: Life inside Denmark’s prisons for “undeportables,” failed asylum-seekers whose home countries won’t accept forced deportations.  
• IRIN: In Nigeria, EU-funded groups help would-be migrants and returnees get back on their feet.  
• The New York Times (watch): Teaching refugees about sex and consent in Sweden.
• Thomson Reuters Foundation: No name, no rights: The long road to citizenship for Thailand’s 487,000 stateless persons.
• The Moscow Times: Two Cuban migrants sentenced to one-year jail time for attempting to illegally cross the Russian border into Alaska.

Thanks for reading! 

Tania Karas is a freelance foreign correspondent-for-hire focused on migration policy and foreign affairs, as well as a contributing editor for PRI. She is a Master's candidate in international human rights law at the University of Oxford. She writes for Reuters, Refugees Deeply, IRIN and others, and was previously a staff reporter for the New York Law Journal. Her most recent story is 'I lost trust in the system' says U.S. citizen unable to reunite with Yemeni family. Find her on Twitter at @TaniaKaras.

Lolita Brayman is a U.S.-based immigration attorney focusing on refugee and asylum issues and a staff attorney with the Defending Vulnerable Populations Project with CLINIC. She holds an M.A. in conflict resolution and mediation and previously worked as an editor at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. She’s written for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Guardian, National Geographic, among others. Find her on Twitter at @lolzlita.

Logo design by John Kapenga.