Migratory Notes 57
TPS on trial, invisible walls, opting out of sanctuary
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DACA
Congress is under deadline to pass a spending bill this week, but Democrats are no longer pushing for DACA protections to be part of the deal. They also have not agreed to include any funding for Trump’s border wall as part of a DACA compromise. (The spending bill is unlikely to include a measure defunding sanctuary cities.)
Labor
More than a quarter of immigrant laborers that were essential to rebuilding Houston after Hurricane Harvey, many of them undocumented, lost thousands of dollars through rampant wage theft, reports The Intercept. But a group of labor activists investigated the complicated legal background to directly pressure the country’s second-largest disaster recovery firm to pay their workers’ stolen wages, instead of letting the company push the blame on unaccountable subcontractors.
Trump is building “invisible walls” that make it increasingly difficult to hire skilled foreign workers, reports The Washington Post. A new report by the American Immigration Lawyers Association points to a decrease in petitions for H1-B visas and proposals to do away with visas for the spouses of highly skilled workers. And just this week, USCIS announced it would suspend speed processing for H1-B visas.
Ads have popped up all over BART stations in San Francisco denouncing the H1-B visa program and telling U.S. workers “your companies think you are expensive, undeserving and expendable,” reports CBS SF Bay Area. An organization called Progressive for Immigration Reform, tagged as an “anti-immigrant” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is responsible for the controversial signs.
A group of Republican congressmen want the Trump administration to help Geo Group fend off lawsuits alleging the company ran a work program that paid detained immigrants a wage of $1 a day, reports The Daily Beast. Their argument, filed in support of the private prison company, is that detainees are not actually workers and therefore don’t deserve a full wage.
Border
in Nogales, Arizona, residents see their home as a shining example of the richness of border culture, now under threat. “The Borderlands, in other words, is more than a place to draw a line. It’s a region of ancient animal migrations and vital human trade,” writes Maya Kapoor for High Country News. The attitude of the people she meets is starkly different than the national conversation rooted in fear: “We’re all on the same team. If this region survives, it will be together.”
The trial of a Border Patrol agent who shot across the border and killed a 16-year-old Mexican boy in 2012 begins in Arizona this week, reports the Arizona Daily Star. After attorney arguments between the government and the agent’s defense attorney postponed the trial five times, it will be the first federal trial of a Border Patrol agent in a use-of-force fatality.
In another case, a federal appeals court ruled that the family of a Mexican teen killed in 2010 by a Border Patrol agent who shot across the border in Texas cannot sue the agent, upholding earlier rulings that non-citizens injured outside of the U.S. do not have the same right to “damage remedies” from the border patrol.
A 250-year-old village on the Rio Grande river is home to a wildlife reserve housing several species of rare birds. Now the expansion of Trump’s wall threatens their future, reports The Texas Observer.
California Crackdown
California Gov. Jerry Brown is facing down the White House on a host of issues, with immigration chief among them. But behind the headlines, Brown is working to find common ground wherever possible with the Trump administration despite being blocked at every turn, reports The New Yorker.
ICE’s third California operation in nearly a month has led to the arrest of 115 people over three days.
For the first time, an undocumented person will hold a state-level post in Californiaas the state’s advisor on college access and financial aid.
Not everyone in California supports sanctuary policies. The city council of Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, voted to opt out of the state-wide sanctuary law this week. Then it went a step further, voting to submit a legal brief in support of the federal government’s position that three of California’s immigration laws are unconstitutional.
JustSecurity reports on the legal precedent for the mayor of Oakland’s warning to undocumented immigrants and finds that, in previous cases where state decisions were in opposition of the national policy, federal courts ruled in favor of federal laws.But when states are arguing that national policies are xenophobic or discriminatory there could be more leeway.
Detention
Capital & Main has created a map and database of immigrant detainees who died in detention centers. Private operators make millions off immigrant detention while ignoring the mental health needs of imprisoned people which has led to scores of deaths in private immigration detention centers.
The Supreme Court will take up a case to determine how much power the federal government has to detain someone for a possible immigration violation after they’ve already served time for a criminal conviction. Most recently, the 9th Circuit said that, unless an immigrant is immediately detained after serving their criminal conviction, they deserve a hearing before being sent to detention. The federal government, and other lower courts, have disagreed.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging the Trump administration is detaining asylum seekers to discourage them from coming north. The aim of the suit is, in part, to force the administration to release asylum seekers while they wait for their court cases.
Enforcement
The Trump administration has cast a wide net to make all undocumented immigrants a priority for deportation, and as a result, many families are divided.Time Magazine takes a deep dive into the reality of these policies on the ground.
DHS refutes that it has a policy of separating families who are seeking asylum, but it’s happening. The Washington Post reports on the story of one family: three children who fled with their mother from El Salvador because gangs threatened the life of their oldest brother, but were separated from her at the border. It was three terrifying months before they were reunited.
Buzzfeed reports on another tactic that activists allege they see immigration authorities do, but which ICE denies: use smuggling accusations as a pretext for an arrest. But the cases rarely make it to a criminal court.
A sheriff in Troy, New York has shown a singular zeal for cracking down on immigration through his support of 287(g), a program that deputizes local police to oversee immigration enforcement, reports The New York Times. He’s the first in the state to welcome the program, in an area where few immigrants end up in the county jail.
Activists and ICE
The ACLU says they have documented two-dozen cases of activists being targeted by ICE, reports NPR.
Activists have a new rallying cry in the age of Trump: abolish ICE. As any movement on DACA stalls, Vox reports on the concept’s increasing popularity among progressives — it’s been discussed by MSNBC host Chris Hayes, covered in The Nation and is the talk among the on-the-ground activists around the country — and what the idea actually means.
TPS
The fourth TPS-related lawsuit was filed by a group of Haitians in a Florida federal court last Thursday alleging that Trump used an invalid process to cancel Haiti’s TPS status, the Miami Herald reports. The plaintiffs include the weekly Brooklyn-based Haitian newspaper, Haïti Liberté, and argues that the newspaper’s sales would be hurt because it would lose audience and its main writer is a TPS recipient.
Monday was the deadline for Salvadorans to re-apply for TPS status before the program ends, but advocates were concerned that only two-thirds of eligible people had applied, reports The Washington Post.
Migration
A trans woman fled Honduras, one of the most dangerous places to be queer. Her new life began on the migrant trail when she was admitted to the first shelter in Mexico to have space exclusively for LGBTQ migrants, reports The Nation.
Travel Ban
Mother Jones reports on how immigrants impacted by Trump’s travel ban feel one year later: like prisoners, sad, depressed, and forced to choose between their own lives in the U.S. or seeing a dying parent or a longtime fiancee. The magazine is still collecting stories.
USCIS
USCIS will open a new oversight division called the Organization of Professional Responsibility to make sure its caseworkers aren’t being too lenient towards citizenship or green card applicants, reports The Washington Post.
Immigration is an International Issue
Some 20,000 asylum seekers have crossed into Canada without documents in the past year, overwhelming the country’s asylum system, reports Reuters in a comprehensive review of Canadian immigration data over the past 14 months. An extensive graphic story demonstrates how Donald Trump’s election and a global refugee crisis disrupted Canada’s refugee processing system.
Buy a beer at a craft brewery in Tijuana, and the proceeds will go to support the city’s migrant communities. It’s one inventive way that the Insurgente brand, which takes almost no proceeds from the beer, is supporting deportees, reports Pacific Standard.
Follows: sexual assault in detention, sanctuary in Texas, census and citizenship
- A woman who alleged she was retaliated against after complaining of a sexual assault at a detention center in Texas was released, reports Rewire.
- Despite Texas’ ban on sanctuary cities, officers in some cities still rarely ask about immigration status, creating a de facto safe space for immigrants,reports The New York Times.
- Trump’s campaign committee is touting his plans to add a citizenship question to the census in an email message asking for campaign funds, reports Talking Points Memo.
JOB POSTINGS & OPPORTUNITIES
Selected Resources
- Podcasts to check out
- Only in America: National Immigration Forum launched a new podcast about the people behind immigration issues.
- The New American Songbook from Groundtruth Project looks at the stories behind the songs of immigrants.
- Voices in America
- Mash-Up American
- ¿Qué Pasa, Midwest? is a bilingual podcast to help encourage a Midwestern Latinx community
- For a more complete list Radio Public curates podcasts about immigration and migration
- Recently released immigration books and reports (got one, send it over)
- The Making of a Dream: How a group of young undocumented immigrants helped change what it means to be American by Laura Wides-Muñoz covers the growth of the Dreamer movement.
- The Book of Isaias: A child of Hispanic immigrants seeks his own America by Daniel Connolly is a nonfiction narrative about the children of Mexican immigrants coming of age in Tennessee.
- The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom by Helen Thorpe tells the story of a Denver high school.
- Special report on the Politics of Immigration and Education from the journal Education Policy.
- Immigration-related curriculum
- Re-imagining immigration has resources and lessons to teach about migration, immigration, refugees, and civic empowerment through history, literature, and the sciences
- The Advocates for Human Rights and the Immigration History Research Center at UMN free curriculum that helps students learn about U.S. immigration through personal narratives: Teaching Immigration with the Immigrant Stories Project
- Imm-print published an Immigration Detention Syllabus
- Immigration reporting tools and tips
- Immigration Data Resources: An extensive, and growing, list of immigration resources curated by PRI’s Angilee Shah and shared as part of her presentation on finding immigration stories at NICAR 2018.
- How to cover local refugee communities (American Press Institute)
- Tips on covering immigration when you do not live near the border(Daniel Connolly, from IRE 2017)
- Resources for investigating visas (Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting)
That’s all for Migratory Notes 57. 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. Daniel Kowalski, Audrey Singer, Michele Henry, Jason Alcorn, Voice of San Diego Border Report, Global Nation Exchange FB group, Migration Information Source, Politico’s Morning Shift, 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 How can collaborations between ethnic and mainstream outlets serve communities in the digital age? for American Press Institute. 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 Single-payer health care: what Californians need to know. You can find her on Twitter @1eaguilera
*Yana Kunichoff is an independent journalist and documentary producer who covers immigration, policing, education and social movements. She was project manager for Migrahack 2016 in Chicago. She has also produced feature-length documentaries and a pop-culture web series for Scrappers Film Group; worked as a fellow with City Bureau, where she won a March 2016 Sidney Hillman award for an investigation into fatal police shootings; and covered race and poverty issues for the Chicago Reporter. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard and Chicago magazine among others. You can find her on Twitter @yanazure
