U.S. (Im)migration News

Families are still being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border: A report by a Texas civil rights group found 38 cases where children had been taken from their parents in McAllen, Texas, after the “zero tolerance” family separation policy ended last June. Sometimes the separations occurred due to “uncorroborated allegations” that the parents committed crimes. Court documents show hundreds more such cases occurred (NBC News).

On Thursday, a federal district judge in California heard arguments from families who say they were separated after the policy ended. Judge Dana Sabraw, who is overseeing Ms. L vs. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the case that effectively ended the administration’s policy and reunited some separated families — pressed government lawyers on whether the class of families represented should be expanded. Related: The U.S. is still separating families by saying parents represent a “danger” to the child, but what constitutes a danger is not clearly defined (USA Today). Also: How the ongoing court case might give one separated immigrant family a second chance (BuzzFeed News).

What we’re watching:

Flurry of lawsuits challenge Trump’s emergency declaration: Several lawsuits were filed this week against the administration after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to secure funding for a wall along the southern border with Mexico. One such case was initiated by the American Civil Liberties Union, and another was filed by a coalition of 16 states including New York and California (Associated Press). A group of Texas landowners and a government watchdog group in D.C. filed two additional cases (USA Today). House Democrats introduced a measure today to block the national emergency declaration, calling it an overreach of presidential power. If passed by both houses of Congress, it would terminate Trump’s declaration — though the president could still veto it (USA Today).
Liberians in U.S. to lose status: A federal program called Deferred Enforced Departure has allowed many Liberians to legally stay in the U.S. since 2002, when their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation ended. But in just under two months their DED will expire, leaving Liberians in the U.S. a choice: leave their American children behind or stay in the U.S. and become undocumented (Washington Post).

What we're reading:

The New York Times: With Trump’s tough deterrence efforts, many asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border are giving up.
Rewire: Self-induced abortions risks leaving undocumented immigrant women without a choice.
NBC News: Immigrants innovate at higher rate than U.S. citizens, but face a slew of visa challenges that make it difficult to start and build companies.
The New York Times: Rapper 21 Savage speaks out about ICE detention, the Grammys and his uncertain future.
Los Angeles Times: This new California law aims to protect immigrant home cooks. It may help tech giants instead.
The New York Times: Wait times for immigrants to naturalize and obtain U.S. citizenship are double what they were two years ago.
Center for Public Integrity: A national emergency: Immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens could be deported or exiled if they seek green cards.
Vox: To win the global artificial-intelligence race, the U.S. needs to welcome immigrants.
Voice of San Diego: California laws meant to integrate immigrants, such as one allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses, can open a backdoor for ICE.
CNN: Workers detained after ICE agents raided a Tennessee meatpacking plant last year file class action lawsuit alleging agents used racial slurs and excessive force.
NPR: The Democratic Party’s base has adopted a more progressive attitude on immigration in a short time span. Changes pose challenges for party leaders.
The Guardian: The death of two child migrants show the vulnerability of migrants forced to “remain in Mexico” under new U.S. policy for asylum-seekers.

Hundreds of Central American migrants are shuttered in an abandoned Mexican factory in Piedras Negras, not permitted to exit and request asylum at the U.S. border. (Photo by Alice Driver. Read her story at The Takeaway)

Longreads & Listens:

ProPublica: Nearly 30 years after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as an undocumented child, a reporter goes back to that very stretch. Memories followed.
Guernica: “The Best Kind of People”: shifting definitions of citizenship and the making of Arizona. Read more essays like this in Guernica’s recent Rewriting the West series.
Reveal (listen): A surreal mental illness sweeps across families stuck in an Australian immigrant detention camp on a tiny island nation in the South Pacific.

Around the World

Flight from Venezuela: Venezuelans are being forced into more difficult routes out of the country as President Nicolas Maduro closes borders in his standoff with the opposition (Al Jazeera). As the humanitarian situation worsens, thousands of refugees are traveling to neighboring Colombia along a 12,000-foot pass in the Andes (The New York Times). And more than 1,000 Venezuelans with HIV have made their way to Peru to avoid losing access to antiretroviral drugs (The Guardian). More than 3 million Venezuelans are now outside the country, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. The figure could rise to 5.3 million by the end of 2019 (France 24). Related: A few hundred people with Hungarian heritage have been unlikely beneficiaries of a resettlement program and relocated to Hungary--on condition that they tell nobody in the increasingly anti-immigrant country about their situation (Index.hu).

Children at risk: The vulnerability of child migrants is becoming increasingly more prominent in the international debate on migration and asylum policy. In the UK, a new campaign aims to change restrictions on migrants’ access to public funds that have left children sleeping on the streets (The Independent). A new Red Cross/Red Crescent report said that a five-fold increase in the number of unaccompanied child migrants means over 300,000 are vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation (IFRC). In Europe, almost 30 percent of asylum seekers are children (Al Jazeera).

What we’re reading:

Reuters: Less than 5 percent of refugees in need of resettlement were able to access it in 2018, according to UNHCR.

Latin America:

Daily Beast: Her family survived the El Mozote massacre. Now she’s fleeing El Salvador’s gangs.
Arizona Republic: Tijuana struggles to accommodate migrant families as U.S. begins sending them back.

Middle East & North Africa:

IRIN: Libya has long been a destination country for migrant workers, but hard economic times are making them look elsewhere.
El Pais: Spain and Morocco reach deal to curb migrant flows by returning some of those rescued to Moroccan ports instead of bringing them to Spain.
972 Magazine: Israel wants to deport 300 asylum seekers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Europe:

Euronews: Illegal border crossings into the EU are at a six-year low, according to the bloc’s border agency Frontex.
The Guardian: Hospitals and local governments in the UK are charged fees by immigration authorities to embed border guards, who restrict irregular migrants’ access to services.
Irish Examiner: Four UN rapporteurs say Ireland’s temporary visa scheme for the fishing industry makes migrants vulnerable to exploitation and modern slavery.
BBC: Wealthy investors can buy residency in the EU if they have €250,000 to purchase in property. But “golden visa” scheme is driving up housing costs in Greece.

Sub-Saharan Africa:

Times of Israel: A man from Niger deported by Israel last year has spent several months in an Ethiopian airport after his home country refused to accept his repatriation.
Quartz: More than 80 percent of migrants from African countries don’t leave the continent, according to African Union analysis.

Asia-Pacific:

Myanmar Times: Several hundred refugees, not part of the Rohingya minority, to return from camps in Thailand to their homes in southeastern Myanmar under a voluntary repatriation scheme.
The Caravan: Rohingya refugees who escaped to India face ramped up detention and deportation from a Hindu nationalist government hostile to Islam.
Ten Daily: Australian officials confirmed medical evacuees from Nauru and Manus Island will be taken to Christmas Island, not the Australian mainland.

Miscellaneous Things We Love

Los Angeles Times: In L.A.’s Tehrangeles, a group of Iranian men have been coming together for 26 years to revisit their youth in showbiz, before the revolution drove them from home.
Chicago Magazine: In the shadow of government change, an arepas restaurant is a haven for Venezuelans in Chicago.
The Guardian: How the writing of Andrea Levy, a novelist who died this week, gave a voice to Britain’s Windrush generation.
Refugees Deeply: Love letters from four refugees in a camp on the Greek island of Leros to inanimate objects they had to leave behind.
Taste: Homecoming is an annual tradition in U.S. Southern churches. But what happens when the potluck dish is made by an immigrant?
HyperAllergic: The Global Guides program at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia hires refugees from the Middle East to give personalized tours of artifacts from their cultural heritage.

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Tania Karas is the managing editor of Refugees Deeply as well as a reporter/editor for Global Nation, PRI The World's immigration desk. She is a Master's candidate in international human rights law at the University of Oxford. She has reported from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon and was previously a staff reporter for the New York Law Journal. 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 the Nation, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Guardian, National Geographic, among others. Find her on Twitter at @lolzlita.

Moira Lavelle is a freelance reporter focusing on gender, migration, and borders. She is currently working on a master’s degree at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Find her on twitter @alohamoira.

Fergus Peace is a researcher and journalist writing about refugees and migration. He's recently written for the Financial Times and Apolitical, and tweets at @FergusPeace.

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