Migratory Notes 29
Extreme vetting social media for tone, DACA bargaining chip, Phoenix violence

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Sheriff Joe, Phoenix Violence, and a Government Shutdown
After Trump delivered a rambling speech in Phoenix in which he took shots at Arizona’s two Republican senators, threatened that he would shut down federal government if funding isn’t allocated for the wall, and implied that he plans to pardon former Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio, many national papers led with a photo of the president at the rally. The Arizona Republic’s coverage was different. The editors chose a full page photo of a phalanx of dozens of police officers facing a single protester kneeling with the giant headline “Violence Erupts.” An editor explained to CNN that this was what the dozen or so Arizona Republic reporters experienced on the ground as police used tear gas and pepper balls to disperse the crowd, and how it differed from past rallies in the state.
Trump’s team said on Thursday that the president is serious about his threats to shut down government if the border wall is not supported. Markets and legislators are taking him seriously. But Newsweek political editor Michael Cooper argues “the chances of a shutdown occurring…may be smaller than they seem.” His reason: “Trump’s definition of a border wall has been opaque enough and fungible enough that there is some room for compromise.”
Enforcement
The Trump administration is working with like-minded sheriffs to expand the deportation dragnet to jails by circumventing court decisions that limit local law enforcement from holding immigrants after their jail sentence, on what is known as a detainer, The New York Times reports. If implemented, this could have a larger effect than banning sanctuary municipalities, since there are more sheriffs who support the Trump administration but turn down detainers for fear of violating the Fourth Amendment and facing costly payouts.
The Melting Pot
The places that have the fewest immigrants are the strongest supporters of politicians who run on anti-immigrant platforms. “This disparity is partly explained by the Democratic advantages among minority voters, whether native-born or naturalized citizens born abroad,” CNN Political Analyst Ron Brownstein writes. “But the consistency of this contrast also suggests that suspicion about immigration among the native-born population is generally more intense in places with little exposure to immigrants than in communities where such exposure is more common.”
DACA as a Bargaining Chip?
A deadline is looming for the Trump administration set by 10 state attorney generals who say they will sue the government if Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is not stopped by September 5. Meanwhile, top White House officials are urging the Trump administration to push a deal that would use Dreamers as a bargaining chip, McClatchy reports. DACA recipients would be spared if lawmakers support building a wall, locking up more immigrants and slashing legal migration.
But Democratic lawmakers say the deal is a “non-starter,” Huffington Post reports.
The story of a Chinese DACA recipient who is heading back to college in Nebraska and does not know when he will see his parents, undocumented nail salon and construction workers, again, was told to Daniela in an op ed for the LA Times.
What do the 700,000 Dreamers who received DACA and John Lennon have in common? NPR reports that in the course of Lennon’s 1970s battle to stay in the U.S., his lawyer unveiled prosecutorial discretion, which until then had been essentially a secret government program. It enables the federal government to prioritize certain immigrants for deportations and hold off on others, and is what Obama used to create DACA.
The Economy
Consumer companies are reporting a drop in profits as some Latino customers decrease spending due to uncertainty about deportation, CNBC reports. “They are staying at home. They are going out less often. Particularly around border towns in the United States, you’re seeing a change in behavior,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said at a July conference. “But the analysts also had good news,” Thomas Franck writes. “The weakness in Hispanics’ spending is probably temporary and may present a buying opportunity for stock investors.”
Limiting migration could have a devastating economic effect in one of the states that elected him, argue two economists in the Washington Post. Some findings:
●Michigan was the only state in the 2010 Census to have lost population; 65,000 new migrants since then are the only reason it’s not still losing people.
● More than 40 percent of Michigan’s immigrants have a bachelor’s degree or higher — nearly twice the rate as the rest of the state’s population. That number is even higher in the past six years: 63 percent of immigrants arriving in Michigan since 2010 (and 50 percent of all immigrants to the United States over this period) are college-educated.
Border
Trump promised to hire 5,000 new Border Patrol agents after he took office, but so far nothing has happened. Since 2013 the agency has failed at meeting its hiring goals stymied by bad morale, high attrition and corruption, reports the LA Times. Border Patrol has 2,000 vacancies and fewer officers than when Trump took office.To meet the current goal it would have to screen about 750,000 applicants, according to DHS.
Muslim Ban
Trump’s promise of “extreme vetting” of immigrants is playing out in new social media monitoring that measures tone, The Nation reveals: “What should be constitutionally protected speech could now hinder the mobility of travelers because of a secretive regime that subjects a person’s online words to experimental ‘emotion analysis.’”
Trump used the terrorist attack in Barcelona as an argument for why U.S. courts should allow his administration to move forward with his travel ban, especially his focus on majority Muslim countries, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!” Trump tweeted.
Books
Aziz Ansari, Mila Kunis, and other stars share what immigration means to them, in six words, in a new collection, Entertainment Weekly reports. Here’s a couple:
“Mom’s recipes get ruined by me.”
— Randall Park, “Louis Huang” on Fresh off the Boat
“Even after internment, still love America.”
— George Takei
Immigration in as International Issue
Residents in a small town in Mexico are making plans to expand restaurants, keeping sons from heading north, and banking on a promised $1 billion Toyota plant that is in the works. But the cancellation of NAFTA, as Trump has promised as recently as this week, would derail their plans and could hurt their economic dreams and send youth to the U.S., reports the Dallas Morning News.
International soccer star Lukas Podolski is considering suing Breitbart, which ran a photo of him to illustrate a story titled “Spanish Police Crack Gang Moving Migrants on Jet-Skis”, according to BBC sport. The well-known Polish-born German footballer maintains he is neither a gang member nor an illegal immigrant.
The Children
Trump’s immigration crackdown is traumatizing children — there are roughly 1 million minors without legal status and 4.5 million citizen kids who have at least one undocumented parent. In response, school administrators are declaring campuses as sanctuaries, offering training for students and families and promising to protect personal data. But there are other measures that they may not be able to control as 20,000 school safety officers may be deputized as immigration agents, reports the Guardian and 74Million in a three-part series on impacts at school.
In Philadelphia a puppet-making workshop has been trying to help kids write about their immigration experiences and build puppet alter-egos. The founder told Slate he wanted to find a way to help kids with their anxiety over immigration enforcement and the potential deportation of parents, family members or themselves.
Follow — Student with soccer scholarship deported to El Salvador; Asylum seekers; court arrests
- The Washington Post’s Maria Sacchetti visited the two brothers deported to El Salvador who grew up in suburban Maryland, one of whom had just been accepted to college with a soccer scholarship. They are living in a town of 1,000 which has made the news for its coffin building businesses due to local violence. Out of place and anxious in their new surroundings, they hope they can use soccer as a way to go to another country, possibly Canada.
- Canada’s immigration minister denies the country was ill-prepared for the flow of asylum seekers from the U.S. (Globe and Mail).
- California’s chief justice said federal immigration agents continue to enter courthouses looking for undocumented immigrants scheduled to be in court, despite her efforts to get the U.S. attorney general to stop this practice. (Los Angeles Times)
JOB POSTINGS & OPPORTUNITIES
Selected Resources
- The Migration Policy Institute released a new report about the education and work profiles of the DACA set.
- The Advocates for Human Rights and the Immigration History Research Center at UMN recently released a free curriculum that helps students learn about U.S. immigration through personal narratives: Teaching Immigration with the Immigrant Stories Project
- New tool from Trac maps cases pending in immigration court
- States Have Already Passed Almost Twice as Many Immigration Laws as Last Year (National Conference of State Legislatures Report)
- The Stoop is a new podcast on black identity with journalist Hana Baba and Leila Day
- Migration Policy Institute publishes a report on Trump’s first six months and immigration
- Tips on covering immigration when you do not live near the border (Daniel Connolly, from IRE 2017)
- Voices In America launched a podcast recently about the lives of immigrants affiliated with Public Counsel.
- What are schools to do with a child’s caretaker is detained? What can school districts do to protect their undocumented students’ data? Stanford Law School and the California Charter Association created a guide answering these questions for educators.
Immigration Jobs and Opportunities
- Investigative Reporters (2) — Reveal/The Center for Investigative Reporting
- ¿Que Pasá Midwest? Freelance Editor/ Producer WNIN
- Associate Editor, Investigations Think Progress
- Community Engagement Editor — New Michigan Media (collaboration of ethnic/ minority media in Michigan)
- PRI’s Global Nation is accepting pitches for stories about immigration and diversity
- International Reporting Fellowship for Minority Journalists ICFJ travel fellowship (not specifically migration, but good opportunity to do so)
- Editor/ Producer — Latino USA
- Race/ Related Editor — New York Times
- Director of Communications — Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC)
Jobs here.
That’s all for Migratory Notes 29. We’re based in LA, so help us out by letting us know what’s going on elsewhere. If there’s a story you think we should consider, please send us an email.
Special thanks to intern Dalia Espinosa. Other thank you to those who helped this week, knowingly or unknowingly. Jacque Boltik for creating our template. Jorge Rivas, Laurel Rosenhall, Jason Alcorn, Cindy Carcamo’s FB posts, Voice of San Diego Border Report, Global Nation Exchange FB group, Marshall Project newsletter, Xavier Maciel’s Sanctuary Schools newsletter, Migration Information Source, and countless tweeters.
*Daniela Gerson is an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge with a focus on community, ethnic, and participatory media. She is also a senior fellow at the Democracy Fund. Before that she was a community engagement editor at the LA Times; founding editor of a trilingual hyperlocal publication, Alhambra Source; staff immigration reporter for the New York Sun; and a contributor to outlets including WNYC: New York Public Radio, The World, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, CNN, and The New York Times. She recently wrote “I’m a DACA student and I’m praying ICE won’t pick up my parents” for the Los Angeles Times. You can find her on Twitter @dhgerson
*Elizabeth Aguilera is a multimedia reporter for CALmatters covering health and social services, including immigration. Previously she reported on community health, for Southern California Public Radio. She’s also reported on immigration for the San Diego Union-Tribune, where she won a Best of the West award for her work on sex trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico; and before that she covered a variety of beats and issues for the Denver Post including urban affairs and immigration. Her latest story is Drinking lead — why California may force all schools to test their water. You can find her on Twitter @1eaguilera



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