The Borderline: 05/12–05/18
EDITORS’ NOTE
Hi everyone! We hope you are safe and healthy, wherever you happen to be. This is the twentieth edition of The Borderline, Stories from the Border’s weekly newsletter on immigration and border issues. This is our curated summary of what we’ve been reading and working on throughout the semester. With all of us social distancing and doing our part to cure the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re publishing from our own corners of the country: Arizona, California, Texas, and Chicagoland. As we finished final exams over the past two weeks, we took a brief hiatus from publishing the newsletter, but now we’re back!
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the virus is still spreading through ICE detention facilities. So far, 934 detainees and 44 employees have tested positive for coronavirus. Trump’s border wall is still on track in the midst of the pandemic, as construction has continued. The wall now poses a threat to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, which is sacred land for the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose traditional lands lie in Arizona and the upper portion of Mexico. Work crews have destroyed burial sites with dynamite, and the completed border wall would bisect the O’odham reservation, cutting off the approximately 2,000 members who technically live in Mexico from their family, community, and essential tribal services like medical care.
Last week, the American Immigration Council, Human Rights Watch, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Winston and Strawn LLC law firm filed a lawsuit against the state of California to release records of the Migrant Protection Protocols, otherwise known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. The lawsuit challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s agencies’ failure to disclose records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from last December. Since the Migrant Protection Protocols began, over 65,000 migrants and asylum seekers have been sent to Mexico to wait out their hearings, and fewer than 500 people have been granted asylum. More than 20,000 have been sent to Mexico in since the pandemic began, although a third of the migrants are from Central American. On top of the migrants’ increased vulnerability to violent crime in the camps (as of February 2020, more than 1,000 cases of rape, murder, kidnapping, and torture had been reported in the camps), crowded and unhygienic conditions in the camps have created a breeding ground for COVID-19. On April 30, volunteer doctors opened a tent hospital in a migrant camp near Matamoros, Mexico; there are 1,500 people living in the camp, and only 20 beds at the hospital.
On Friday, the HEROES Act — which would provide financial assistance for taxpaying immigrants regardless of immigration status — passed in the House. Although House Republicans failed to block the bill, it is unlikely to survive in the Republican-dominated Senate. Under the provisions of the first coronavirus stimulus bill, undocumented immigrants and their spouses (regardless of their own immigration status) were unable to receive stimulus checks; a group in Illinois has filed a class action lawsuit to get stimulus checks for immigrants and their spouses.
Across the country, interviews and naturalization ceremonies have stopped as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices are closed in response to the pandemic. As a result, at least tens of thousands of immigrants have been prevented from becoming naturalized citizens.
To stay updated, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @borderstoriesAZ.
– Anna Kate and Jeromel
DEEP DIVES
We are learning about how Trump’s immigration crackdown is affecting immigration agencies themselves; United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has seen a dramatic reduction in visa and green card applications due to immigration restrictions, and has requested $1.2 billion from Congress due to lost revenue during the pandemic. It also plans to raise application fees, potentially making the legal immigration process more difficult. The Trump Administration is currently facing backlash from tech companies, businesses, and universities for suggesting suspending the Optional Practical Training Program, which incentivizes international students to attend U.S. universities by providing professional training for one or two years after graduation. The administration is also planning on imposing new H-1B visa restrictions, but is facing a surprising obstacle: low unemployment in tech. The administration is using economic downturns and increased unemployment rates among native-born Americans as a reason for restricting immigration and the number of visas issues, but in the technology sector, restrictions on the number of H-1B visas issued to professionally-skilled immigrants aren’t making much sense. Immigrants who are currently in the U.S. on H1-B visas and have lost their jobs due to the pandemic are ineligible for unemployment benefits, despite paying taxes. If they are unable to find a new job in 60 days, they will be deported.
The administration has also cracked down on asylum; since the pandemic began, only 59 people have been interviewed for asylum, and only two have been granted it. As many as 20,000 people have been turned away from the U.S. border, regardless of whether or not they invoke asylum. In New York, Dr. Julia Iafrate — an immigrant from Canada who has lived in the U.S. for 13 years and an assistant professor at Columbia University Medical Center — has been treating COVID-19 patients as a volunteer since infection rates in the city began to skyrocket. At the beginning of May, she received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Services telling her that her green card application had been denied.
WEEKLY ROUNDUP
NATION
ENFORCEMENT:
- Before the pandemic began, Trump aide Stephen Miller had sought to use public health concerns as a way to restrict immigration, both legal and illegal; now, he is one of the main architects of Trump’s pandemic immigration policies: Miller has been accused in the past of targeting nonwhite immigrants with his health-related policies; is this the case now? Will the pandemic become precedent for future health-related immigration restriction?
- According to the lawyers, parents in immigration detention are often given a choice: sign a paper to allow their children to leave detention and be separated, or remain in detention together indefinitely: How will separated families eventually be reunited? Many of the families interviewed by lawyers say that they were not provided with lawyers of their own when they decided, or felt pressured or threatened into choosing one option over the other; will detention centers face censure for their behavior?
- Health officials worry that new waves of COVID-19 cases could be entering communities from detention centers: What steps should detention centers take to protect not only their inmates and employees, but the communities around them?
- In April alone, over 600 unaccompanied minors, who would normally be allowed to live with relatives prior to asylum hearings, were expelled from the U.S. under COVID-19 measures: How will the Trump Administration continue to change its policies as the pandemic continues? Will the U.S. face backlash for violating international refugee law by refusing to grant asylum?
- The US has allowed just two migrants to stay under tougher border measures: With asylum seekers having “a negligible chance of receiving protection in the US,” are the decisions that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and USCIS make to determine whether an immigrant’s life is in imminent risk from their country of origin accurate? How could they be held accountable when immigrants are sent back whose lives were at risk?
RULINGS:
- Judge says released ICE detainee will not go back to Calhoun County Jail: Would a legal ruling that orders for the release of all ICE detainees with preexisting conditions be possible to litigate?
- Judge allows 5 Central American asylum seekers to enter US: Would there be further instances of this ruling for other asylum seekers who are in present danger having to wait out their asylum case in Mexico with Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy? Are there any subsequent litigations being filed?
- Immigrants languish in detention as immigration courts close from coronavirus fears: With a backlog of 34,000 immigration cases in San Antonio, Texas, and more than one million nationwide as immigration courts shut down, would courts make an attempt to have immigration hearings virtually? What measures are being taken?
- ICE asked migrant parents whether they wished to be separated from their children, agency tells court: Since the ruling by federal Judge Dolly Gee on April 24 ordered ICE to “make every effort to promptly and safely” release children in its custody, would another ruling be made that orders ICE to release detained children and their parents? What is preventing ICE from doing so?
ARIZONA:
- An Arizona coalition of advocacy groups and faith organizations is raising money to provide COVID-19 relief for immigrants and refugees: Could grassroots funding and activism put pressure on state and local governments to provide financial assistance for immigrants and refugees? Will it take away pressure?
- Eloy — a city with two immigration detention centers — has become the new hotspot in Arizona for COVID-19: How does the presence of detention centers affect an area’s overall rate of infection? How do detention centers potentially put the surrounding population at risk of contracting the virus?
CHICAGOLAND:
- Rene Olvio Sangabriel, an undocumented immigrant who had been detained at the Cook Country Jail since October to avoid immigration trouble, has died from COVID-19: Thousands of inmates in Cook Country Jail have been infected; how can the jail contain the internal outbreak?
- Cook Country plans to resume some court hearings, including immigration hearings, on May 31: Immigrants whose hearings have been postponed have been in detention, sometimes without an end in sight. How might immigration hearings and detention look different after the pandemic ends? As more immigrants are being released from detention due to COVID-19 fears, could this set a precedent for less immigration detention in the future?
CALIFORNIA
- Starting Monday, May 18, undocumented immigrants previously excluded from federal COVID-19 stimulus bills can apply for financial assistance from the state of California: California is the first state to set aside funds for undocumented immigrants — will other states follow suit?
- Carlos Escobedo Mejia, a 57-year-old man detained by ICE after coming to the U.S. decades ago to escape war in his home country of El Salvador, is the first person in immigration custody to die of COVID-19: Escobedo Mejia was detained in the Otay Mesa Detention Center, which is run by private company CoreCivic, and died two weeks after testing positive for the virus. Could his death spur the release of more detainees with preexisting conditions? Only about 5% of detainees have been tested for COVID-19 — could the infection rate inside detention centers be worse than we currently know?
TEXAS:
- Community leaders in the town of Pearsall have accused for-profit detention company GEO Group of not being transparent in how they are handling COVID-19 within the center: How should private companies be held accountable for keeping inmates healthy, and how can communities put pressure on these companies to keep their own populations safe from the virus as well?
- A new study has found that the state of Texas profits economically from undocumented immigrants: The study, from Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, found that Texas has made more than $420 million from undocumented people living in the state since 2018. How could studies like this one change economic perceptions of undocumented immigrants? Could this kind of research influence future policies?
