U.S. (Im)migration News

ICE detention powers expanded: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can now arrest immigrants on old convictions and hold them for years without bail, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The majority in the 5-4 decision based their opinion on a 1996 law stating that immigrants with criminal convictions should be placed in mandatory detention (Pacific Standard). The result is that even legal immigrants such as green card holders can be held in detention for crimes for which they already completed sentences. (Vox).

Currently ICE is holding over 50,000 undocumented people in detention, an all-time high (The Daily Beast). There are also thousands of noncitizen inmates held in ten privately run prisons nationwide; one study shows these inmates are given fewer resources such as medicine compared to citizen inmates (New Yorker). In El Paso jails, for example, some immigrants are incarcerated far past their release dates (The Appeal).

Another migrant dies in Border Patrol custody: In Texas, Border Patrol detention centers are well over capacity, leading local governments to release many into the streets as they struggle to find adequate housing (The New York Times). Earlier this week, in El Paso, a 40-year-old Mexican national died while in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (El Paso Times). This comes after the deaths of two migrant children earlier this year led CBP to promise health checks on all children held in custody (Washington Post). Related: One for-profit company rents migrants a GPS-enabled shackle to leave detention, which costs $420 per month. They make thirty million dollars per year (New Yorker).

What we’re watching:

Remain in Mexico expands, faces court challenges: The Trump administration this week expanded its policy of making migrants who cross the southern border wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed. This came just days before a federal judge in California was scheduled to hear a case Friday challenging the policy. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (BuzzFeed News). Separately, on Wednesday a judge heard petitions from 12 migrants who had been returned to Mexico under the policy. He repeatedly asked the government’s attorney how the logistics of the policy would work — for example, how migrants staying in Mexico might receive notices to appear (NTAs) (Reuters).

What we're reading:

BuzzFeed News: Documents made public by the ACLU show ICE can access hundreds of millions of license plate scans to follow immigrants.
San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Cambodian refugees face deportation due to crackdown on immigrants with criminal records.
Latino USA: 24 Hours at the U.S.-Mexico border show how communities are affected by the government’s decisions on immigration.
PRI's The World: U.S. government to Filipino seasonal workers: No visas this year.
Los Angeles Times: Excluded by banks, the Cambodian community in California became their own lenders.
The New York Times: Should refugees start new lives in America with the stress of debt? The State Department requires them to pay back travel costs, and nonprofits get a cut of their loan payments.
City Limits: A look at how rising rents in New York threaten immigrant-run small businesses.
The New York Times: Indigenous languages have become the norm in U.S. immigration courts, but a lack of translators makes it difficult for Central Americans to access the asylum system.
The San Diego Union-Tribune: Concertina wire stolen from the border fence is now used for home security in Tijuana, authorities say.
Dallas News: Many of the soldiers securing our borders are immigrants who are proud to defend the U.S.
CNN: The American Bar Association says U.S. immigration courts are 'on the brink of collapse.'
Reveal: U.S. government uses secret black-site shelters to detain immigrant children in violation of long-standing rules.

Ivis Alexander Medina Aguilera, from Puerto Cortés, Honduras, traveled with a migrant caravan to the U.S. in 2018. “We left because the situation in my country is very critical. In terms of politics and ways to make a living, there’s no security in our country.”
(Brett Gundlock / Stories from the Migrant Trail.)

Longreads & Listens:

Deutsche Welle (watch): An investigative report shows how the EU is outsourcing border control to African countries while European companies profit.
The Conversation: For Native Americans, the U.S.-Mexico border is an 'imaginary line.'
Time: Inside the modern slave trade trapping African migrants.

Around the World

Christchurch massacre highlights anti-immigrant extremism: The tragic killing of 50 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand has sent shockwaves through the country’s immigrant communities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressed the country’s solidarity with migrants in her first public statement after the shooting, saying New Zealand “is their home. They are us” (ABC). Some of those affected were recent arrivals. Two members of one Syrian refugee family were killed in the attack. They’d been resettled to New Zealand just seven months earlier (The Times).

The shooter, a 28-year old Australian man, wrote a manifesto prior to the shooting endorsing conspiracy theories about an “invasion” of immigrants (Chicago Tribune). Hours after the attack, Fraser Anning, a far-right member of Australia’s Senate, issued a public statement blaming Muslim immigration for the attack (Washington Post). That sparked criticism from across the political spectrum in Australia and calls for an agreement between major parties to stop extremists from winning seats in the upcoming parliamentary elections (The Guardian). But in a viral video, one journalist highlighted the Australian government’s own record of anti-immigrant politics (The Project).

Europe continues its hard line on Mediterranean migration: Italy has allowed 49 migrants rescued at sea to disembark on the island of Lampedusa, after deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini initially threatened to turn them away, but impounded the search-and-rescue ship that picked them up (Reuters). Related: On the Italian mainland, a Senegalese man set fire to a bus full of schoolchildren in protest of the government’s policy; none were seriously harmed (The Guardian).

The EU policy of supporting the Libyan coastguard to stop boats from crossing the Mediterranean was sharply criticized this week by a senior UN official, who said that failure to change the EU’s policy would “be tantamount to encouraging and subsidizing torture” (OHCHR). Intercepted migrants are returned to detention in Libya where, according to a new report from Médecins Sans Frontières, hundreds of children are starving (Irish Times). And the sea journey itself remains very dangerous: a boat carrying 44 migrants capsized off the Libyan coast on Tuesday, leaving dozens missing (Associated Press).

This news comes as the EU-Turkey migration deal reached its three-year anniversary this week. The deal stipulated that all asylum-seekers entering Greece via the sea border with Turkey would be detained on the Greek islands, and deported back to Turkey if they were not qualified to apply for asylum in Greece. These island camps are notoriously dangerous and overcrowded. Thousands of people are trapped waiting, some living in tents for years (Associated Press).

What we’re reading:

Latin America:

Washington Post: An armed gang abducts 19 migrants from a bus in northern Mexico.
Al Jazeera: War, amputation, and refuge -- the story of a Salvadoran man who’s fled his country three times.
Wall Street Journal: Trump administration officials clash over relief for 70,000 Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S., as they weigh next steps to pressure the Maduro regime.

Middle East & North Africa:

The Intercept: Syrian refugees use precedent set in Rohingya displacement case to try to bring government officials before the International Criminal Court.
Haaretz: Three officials from the Israeli government’s taskforce for Sudanese asylum-seekers have resigned after criticism from the country’s supreme court.
PRI: Blame game over aid leaves Syrian refugees stranded in desert ‘death’ camp with no running water, regular food supplies, or access to medical care.
Al Jazeera: Driven to suicide in Tunisia's UNHCR refugee shelter.

Europe:

The Times: Britain’s Home Office uses debit cards to spy on asylum-seekers and dock their support payments.
Deutsche Welle: European Court clears way for Germany to deport refugees to other EU countries.
BBC: Inquiry into immigration detention by UK lawmakers found the government “utterly failed” to ensure migrants’ safety, calling for a strict 28-day time limit on detention.

Sub-Saharan Africa:

Al Jazeera: UN warns up to 2 million people in Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe could be displaced by Cyclone Idai.
Quartz: EU claims the migrant crisis is over in Europe. But that just means it’s now taking place off of European shores.
Washington Post: LGBT refugees came to Kenya seeking freedom but claim imprisonment and abuse by the government.

Asia-Pacific:

Refugees Deeply: Land confiscation is the latest barrier to return for Myanmar’s displaced.
Reuters: Rohingya ‘lost generation’ of children struggles to study in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
ABC: Refugees held by Australia on Nauru have been exposed to potentially deadly asbestos.

Miscellaneous Things We Love

The Independent: A homeless child refugee was crowned New York’s chess champion despite only learning to play just last year.
Pacific Standard: Inside the crowdfunded charity helping refugees around the world by topping up their phones.
Los Angeles Times: In Los Angeles’ Little Saigon, this newspaper has been giving a community a voice for 40 years
BBC: The Bradford Friendship Choir strives to help refugees in Bradford, England through their music.

Activists from Amnesty International marked the third anniversary of the controversial migration deal between the EU and Turkey by projecting a slogan on to the walls of the Acropolis: “Humanity first. Refugees Welcome.”

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

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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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