Nearly 37,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan as part of Operation Allies Rescue could qualify for permanent status through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, CBS News reports. But a similar number lack a pathway, and could become vulnerable should their humanitarian parole protections end in two years with no other relief.
The National Butterfly Center near Mission, Texas, released a shocking statement this week, announcing it would be forced to shut down for the weekend due to credible threats. “We simply cannot risk the safety and lives of our staff and visitors during this dangerous time,” the organization said in a statement Thursday.
You may be asking yourself what in the world anyone could have against a butterfly center.
Detained immigrants and their advocates scored a major court victory this week, reaching a “groundbreaking” settlement in a lawsuit filed nearly two years ago over unsafe pandemic conditions.
Under an agreement reached Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is barred from re-detaining immigrants previously released from two California facilities due to COVID-19. This could affect up to 250 people.
The head of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is defending the department’s use of secretive, shadow police units that have been under mounting criticisms from both lawmakers and human rights advocates in recent months.
Commissioner Chris Magnus called Border Patrol’s Critical Incident Teams (BPCITs) “vitally important,” citing their role in evidence collection, Bloomberg Government reports.
New Jersey’s Legislative Latino Caucus says the state’s unjust reallocation of tens of millions of dollars intended for workers left out of federal pandemic relief is “beyond comprehension,” noting it found out about the diversion of funds at the same time as shocked immigrant residents.
The weirdo congressman who when serving as White House doctor claimed that the former twice-impeached president could live to be 200 years old is back, this time spouting lies about immigrants so ridiculous it seems to have caught very professional fact checker Daniel Dale off guard.
“In 2022, illegal immigrants will have MORE FREEDOMS and easier access to healthcare and ballot boxes than most Americans,” Texas Rep.
An Indigenous woman who faced up to six months in prison after blocking border wall construction on sacred lands back in 2020 won her case on religious grounds this week.
Amber Ortega, a member of the Hia C-ed O’odham tribe, had been arrested and slapped with misdemeanor charges after trying to block construction near Quitobaquito Springs, located in Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program said it submitted a number of requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of Information Act back in 2017, seeking records on the mass detention agency’s use of solitary confinement. The practice has been condemned as torture by human rights advocates.
“RT to thank the men and women in blue on #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay,” Kevin McCarthy tweeted from his account earlier this month. The very produced one minute and nine second-long video featured the Republican House minority leader riding bikes with law enforcement and handling memorial wreaths. The tweet, dated Jan. 9, ends with the words “thank you to our police.”
But just three days before that tweet, on the anniversary of the Jan.
Kevin McCarthy is campaigning for speaker on a pro-mass deportation platform, vowing to refuse to take up any immigration legislation putting undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship should Republicans take the House and install him as leader.
McCarthy made the promise to white supremacist rag Breitbart, and “reiterated” that pledge to Axios, a report said.
Did you know that for years farmworkers have not been entitled to overtime pay unless they’ve been working at least ten hours? That’s set to change for many farm laborers in California as of this month, when state law that requires farmers with more than 26 employees to pay overtime after eight hours goes into effect, The Fresno Bee reports.
The law has been phased in since its 2016 passage, finally going into full effect on Jan. 1.
Sohail, a baby terrifyingly lost by his family as they scrambled to flee the Kabul airport last August, has been located and returned to relatives in Afghanistan, Reuters reports. He became separated from his family when his father, a security guard at the U.S. embassy, handed him to a man he believed to be a U.S. soldier. He had been worried the baby would be crushed in the huge crowd.
The Obama administration in 2016 launched a pilot program that not only kept migrant families out of harmful detention conditions, but resulted in extremely high compliance rates. Women’s Refugee Commission said in 2019 that 99% of participants in the Family Case Management Program (FCMP) showed up to their immigration dates.
The Plymouth County, Massachusetts, sheriff’s office announced last fall that it would be ending its agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is a major step forward: The 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement to act as federal immigration agents, is a discriminatory and flawed policy that the Justice Department said has resulted in racial profiling.
New York City says it’s directing $1.5 million in funds to help Haitian asylum-seekers and other migrants access vital services including legal representation. The funds will be distributed to a number of Haitian-led community-based organizations and comes as recent arrivals have settled in the region, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) said in a Dec. 22 release.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is on the record as intentionally targeting immigrants and advocates alike for their criticism of the agency’s frequently deplorable actions. That includes its targeting of Jean Montrevil, a permanent resident and New Sanctuary Coalition cofounder who was deported to Haiti by the previous administration in 2018.
The federal government used a conviction from 1990 as its excuse to deport him.
In a devastating development for thousands of children and parents who were forcibly separated and traumatized by the previous presidential administration, the Justice Department has ended settlement talks with families who have filed legal action against the federal government. The department claimed in a statement that while parties were “unable to reach a global settlement agreement at this time,” it was still open to future talks.
Liberian families in the U.S. won a huge victory in late 2019, following the passage of a pathway to legalization as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The provision, championed by Liberians and their advocates, allows thousands of Liberians with temporary protections to apply for permanent relief. It was a historic win for many families who have been living in limbo.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that as of Sunday evening, more than 50,000 residents in Kentucky were without power following a massive tornado that hit the state on Friday. Among the first responders now helping in recovery efforts is well-known chef and World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder José Andrés.
There are few greater pleasures in life than watching GEO Group continue to lose in court. The private prison profiteer had sought to greatly reduce, and even throw out, the millions of dollars a federal jury had awarded to detained immigrants that the company had forced to work for as little as $1 a day (and sometimes nothing at all).
But the U.S.
Two Illinois counties went straight to court after lawmakers passed into law legislation that effectively ends immigration detention in the state. Their plan was to deal the Illinois Way Forward Act a death blow, and continue reaping in millions from federal contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
But that legal effort by McHenry and Kankakee Counties has failed for now, because a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.
Hundreds of Latino-based non-profit organizations in dozens of states were able to better assist already-vulnerable communities amid the novel coronavirus, thanks to a grant system from a leading non-governmental organization that also worked steadily to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Should pro-deportation Republicans ultimately succeed in their lawsuit seeking to terminate the popular and successful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, that ruling will have devastating repercussions going far beyond the beneficiaries themselves.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) said in updated data that over 1.3 million people live in the same household as a DACA recipient, including 300,000 U.S. citizen children.
NBC News’ Nicole Acevedo reports that Maryland mom María Esther Roque Díaz is strongly urging pregnant individuals, “particularly other Latinas,” get the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s because she gave birth to her child while on life support after contracting the virus. Roque Díaz gave birth to Dylan via cesarean section in December 2020. She would not fully reawaken until mid-February 2021.
Illinois earlier this year passed a law that effectively ends immigration detention in the state, roughly two years after banning private immigration detention facilities. It’s a blueprint that states all over the nation should copy to unclench the grasps of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on communities.
But this victory could now be at risk.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is seeking to return to court to defend a historic state law state banning private for-profit prisons after a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last month ruled against it. Advocates said at the time that California had two options going forward: to appeal before a full panel, or appeal to the Supreme Court. The state has gone with the former choice.
The northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sued the Sacramento sheriff’s department for colluding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in violation of state law. The lawsuit states Sheriff Scott Jones’ “policy and practice of transferring immigrants to ICE” after they’ve already served their time violates “landmark” laws California Values Act and TRUST Act.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog report last month said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was abusing detained immigrants through the use of solitary confinement, but we already knew that.
This same watchdog last year found that ICE had held immigrants in solitary, which is torture, for months at a time.
New Jersey’s Bergen County was the remaining locality in the state to continue holding a federal immigration contract when the commissioner board voted unanimously last month to end the agreement. Last Friday, the remaining 15 immigrants at the jail were removed, a week ahead of schedule. It was the culmination of years of organizing by immigrants and advocates.
An activist and military father who has advocated for deported veterans as co-director of Unified Deported Veterans in Tijuana now gets to return back home himself. Robert Vivar “walked back to San Diego from Tijuana on Veterans Day,” nearly two decades after he was initially deported and had his life upended over a shoplifting offense, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
Waiting for him on the U.S.