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    Court Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Shuttering of Migrant Entry Program

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    A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Monday from ending a signature Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants from four troubled countries to enter the country and work legally.The administration moved in late March to shut down the program by April 24, which offered migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti temporary legal status in the United States. Judge Indira Talwani, of the Federal District Court in Boston, said the program’s termination put thousands of immigrants at imminent risk of deportation hearings once their legal status expires in less than two weeks.Judge Talwani blocked the wholesale shutdown of the program. Otherwise, she wrote in her ruling, the migrants would “be forced to choose between two injurious options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings.”Immigrant advocates hailed the decision as a win for those worried about the imminent stripping of their status.“This ruling is a victory not just for our clients and those like them, but anyone who cherishes the freedom to welcome,” said Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy group. “Our clients — and our class members — have done everything the government asked of them, and we’re gratified to see that the court will not allow the government to fail to uphold its side of the bargain.”The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The judge’s decision came as the Trump administration has moved to end legal protections for migrants from many countries, including by shutting down a program granting legal status to Afghan and Cameroonian migrants. A separate effort to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans in the United States was also blocked by a federal judge.The Biden-era program allowed more migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to fly into the United States and stay temporarily with access to work permits if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks. They were allowed to stay for up to two years.More than 500,000 migrants entered the country under the program. Biden officials said it was part of an effort to deter migrants from those countries from crossing into the country illegally, and encourage a legal pathway instead.Trump officials, announcing the move to end the program last month, said the program added to immigration problems in the United States by granting some protections to “a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status.” More

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      A Nicaraguan asylum seeker checked in with Ice every week. He was arrested anyway

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      It finally happened while he was waiting to get his hair cut.Alberto Lovo Rojas, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, had been feeling uneasy for weeks, worried that immigration officials would arrest him any moment. But he had pushed the worry aside as irrational – after all, he had a permit to legally work in the US, and he had been using an app to check in monthly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Still, something felt off. The Trump administration had promised mass deportations, and in the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Ice had asked him to do extra check-ins each weekend. “I even messaged the Ice office through my app, to ask if something was wrong,” Rojas said.His last check-in with Ice was on 5 February – all normal. On 8 February, they came for him.He was outside Great Clips in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. The barbershop had been crowded, so he put his name down for a cut and decided to wait in his car.Hours later, he was moved into the north-west detention center in Tacoma, awaiting deportation to Nicaragua – which he fled in 2018 amid a violent crackdown against nationwide anti-government protests. Rojas fears he’ll be targeted again.“I’m afraid to go back, I’m afraid for my life,” he told the Guardian. “I’m afraid I will never see my children again.”Rojas, 42, is one of potentially hundreds of people who have been detained in recent weeks despite complying with Ice requirements to regularly check-in. Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian has estimated, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests – 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.View image in fullscreenLawyers and immigration advocates told the Guardian they believe that in order to oblige the president’s demand for mass arrests and deportation, immigration officials are reaching for the “low-hanging fruit” – people that Ice had previously released from custody while they pursued asylum or other immigration cases in a backlogged immigration court system.Most of these people do not have criminal histories and have dutifully been complying with the government’s orders to routinely report to immigration officials. Some have pending asylum cases, or are appealing their deportation orders. Others, like Rojas, had been denied their claims to stay in the US, but were released on supervision.In Rojas’s case, he was allowed to stay in Spokane with his wife and children – who had pending asylum cases – and apply yearly for a permit to legally work.“I just don’t understand,” Rojas’s wife, Dora Morales said. “Why would they want to arrest him now?Rojas had left Nicaragua with his uncle in September 2018.Both men had participated in Nicaragua’s April rebellion of 2018, a movement that started among university students. The movement was incited by unpopular changes to the social security system, but quickly grew into a massive movement calling for democratic reforms.Government forces immediately responded with crushing brutality, shooting at young protesters. “I felt a lot of pain, sadness to see mothers crying for their children,” Rojas said. He felt called to join the cause.Send us a tipIf you are connected to someone who has been deported or is in fear of deportation and have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian, please use a non-work device to call or text immigration reporter Maanvi Singh via the Signal messaging app at 929-418-7275.Rojas was well-known in his neighborhood, and he started to help organize protests and arrange transportation for those interested in attending.But as the demonstrations grew, so did the backlash. Police and pro-government paramilitary groups killed hundreds of students, human rights activists and journalists. His uncle was beaten and shot twice by Nicaraguan paramilitary officers.They had to leave, Rojas said. They went into hiding and eventually made their way out of the country, through Honduras and Guatemala before arriving at the US-Mexico border.“I never broke an immigration law,” Rojas said. He did exactly as he was directed – waiting a week in a notorious hielera – a frigid Customs and Border Protection holding cell where newly arrived immigrants slept on concrete floors. Then he was transferred to Phoenix, Arizona; flown to a detention center in Memphis, Tennessee; then Mississippi, where officials interviewed him to assess his eligibility for asylum in the US; and finally sent to Louisiana while his case was assessed.In July of 2019, a judge denied his asylum application, and he remained in detention while his lawyers appealed. And then – finally – in May 2020, as Covid-19 rapidly spread through the facility where he was held, Rojas’s fate changed. Following a class-action lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that Ice must consider the release of all detainees whose age or health conditions put them at elevated risk of Covid infection.Rojas is missing a kidney – a complication from a car accident when he was a child – and was especially at risk of complications from a coronavirus infection. So they let him go. “It was such a miracle,” he said.View image in fullscreenWhile Rojas was in detention, Morales and the couple’s two young sons, Alberto Jr and Matteo, had managed to escape Nicaragua as well. The family reunited in Spokane. He found work in construction, then on a ranch – and eventually, he was able to get a job as a mechanic at the Corwin Ford dealership in Spokane.“It was almost like some stereotypical, all-American dream. I mean, he was literally working for Ford!” said his friend Lizzy Myers. “He had just gotten this new lease on life, and he was really doing well.”Rojas and Morales had met – years ago – at church. He fell in love with her singing voice, and she managed to chat him up by asking for his help with English. In Spokane, the couple were once again able to attend mass together.Rojas began playing pick-up soccer with a local league. He’s been coaching his eldest in the sport as well. “And they are both improving so much – they are really getting quite good,” Rojas said. Last year, the family welcomed their newest member – baby Santiago – whom they baptized in Spokane’s St Peter church.Rojas’ lawyers reassured him that so long as he complied with Ice’s orders to routinely check in, and applied to renew his work permit each year, he’d be fine.“When the president won the election, he said he would arrest the criminals,” Rojas said. “I was worried. But also, I am not a criminal.”But then, Trump took office and rolled back a Biden-era memo prioritizing the deportation of people with criminal records or who posed threats to public safety. Now, all immigrants in the US without a legal status are subject to arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with Ice. To meet the president’s goal for “mass deportations”, immigration officials have become more indiscriminate in their enforcement, a Guardian analysis last month found.The US arrested more immigrants in February 2025 than any month in the last seven years. Still, no one in his community believed that Rojas would be one of them.“We were all just shocked,” said Susy Glamuzina, his close friend and co-worker. Glamuzina had rushed to Morales’s side as soon as Rojas was arrested and had been driving the family over to Tacoma to visit Alberto in detention. “I just thought, you know, he had a baby who was born here,” she said.View image in fullscreenTheir boss reassured Alberto he’d hold Rojas’s job until he returned, and offered to pitch in for his legal fees. Marcus Riccelli, a Democratic state senator representing Spokane, who played soccer in the same league as Rojas, heard about the case, offered to help find Rojas legal representation and called in a favor to help his family file paperwork to delay his deportation. Meanwhile, friends have jumped in to help Morales with childcare and connect their children – who had been struggling since Rojas’s arrest – with counselors to help them process the trauma.Glamuzina and his friends have already planned a party for when he returns home. “Alberto is really missed. We want him back. And I’ll tell you – if they need any personal testimonies for his case, I can have 20 people in Tacoma in a heartbeat.”A GoFundMe page for his legal fees started by Myers has so far raised nearly $17,000.The family has been using the funds to pay for legal fees, and their lawyers have filed a motion to reopen Rojas’ asylum case. They’re also hoping Rojas will be released soon.He worries about health complications due to his missing kidney if he were to contract any infections while in detention.Morales has chided Rojas for not eating enough. Mealtimes in the detention centre have been irregular, and Rojas has not been in the mood to eat.“I see my husband is getting thinner in detention,” she said. “And I told him, I don’t want to see you thinner, because it would make me sadder than I already am!”It has been difficult, for both of them, not to think about what will happen if he is deported.Morales said news that Rojas has been detained in the US has already spread through their town in Nicaragua, and she worries that government-appointed neighborhood committees will be waiting, ready to alert authorities of Rojas’s arrival. If he isn’t imprisoned or worse, Morales said she worries he could end up exiled – the Nicaraguan government stripped citizenship from hundreds of opponents.“I am preparing for the worst,” Rojas said. “I am praying and I am preparing myself spiritually for what is to come.” More

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      The Trump administration moved to end a program for migrants from 4 Caribbean and Latin American nations.

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      The Trump administration said Friday that it was ending a Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of people from four troubled countries to enter the United States lawfully and work for up to two years.The program offered applicants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela the opportunity to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they passed security checks and had a financial sponsor. They were allowed to stay for up to two years, which could be renewed.Billed “legal pathways” by the Biden administration, the program was first introduced for Venezuelans in 2022, and was expanded to nationals of the other three countries the following year.By the end of 2024, more than 500,000 migrants had entered the United States through the initiative, known as the C.H.N.V. program, an abbreviation of the countries covered by it.The work permits and protection from deportation conferred under the program’s authority, called parole, would expire on April 24.The program’s termination had been expected. On President Trump’s first day back in office, he ordered the Homeland Security Department to take steps to end it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans

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      Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.It will be effective 24 April.The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.Trump, a Republican, took steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office, including a push to deport record numbers of immigrants in the US illegally. He has argued that the legal entry parole programs launched under his Democratic predecessor overstepped the boundaries of federal law and called for their termination in a 20 January executive order.Trump said on 6 March that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia. Trump’s remarks came in response to a Reuters report that said his administration planned to revoke the status for Ukrainians as soon as April.Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. Diplomatic and political relations between the four countries and the United States have been strained.The new legal pathways came as Biden tried to clamp down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status. More

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      ‘Melt Ice’: protesters in New York rally against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies

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      Crowds of demonstrators including undocumented people took to the streets of downtown Manhattan on Thursday in a fierce show of resistance against Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies.The rally, which started at Foley Square and in front of the field office of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), came amid the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdowns.Speaking to the Guardian, Sergio Uzurin, a spokesperson for the grassroots movement NYC Ice Watch, said: “We’re helping to … escort undocumented folks so that they are not afraid.”“As much as the administration is trying to spread an atmosphere of fear, today is proving that some people are undocumented and unafraid to speak out about the social catastrophe that these deportations are causing,” Uzurin added.A 31-year-old undocumented man from Nicaragua who identified himself as Begea said: “We just need an opportunity to show what we could do … We are not criminals. We are just people coming to this country, looking for an opportunity, the opportunity we [lost] in our countries.”View image in fullscreen“It’s negative and really hard, what’s happening to us right now … We need the space to try to be better, to help our families, to support [and do] something good for this country,” Begea added.Echoing similar sentiments, an undocumented man from Oaxaca, Mexico, who identified himself as Alfredo Gayta said through a translator: “I am here to raise our voices against what is happening in New York. We have been treated as criminals and we are not criminals.”Wearing a white T-shirt with the Spanish words “Mis organ y mi sangre no tienen frontera” or “My organs and my blood have no borders”, Gayta said: “When we go out on the streets and are just walking, people would shout for us to leave the country, for us to go back to where we came from. We don’t really take it personally, it doesn’t really bother us. We just leave it in the hand of God.”Gayta went on to add: “The message that I want to give Trump is to give us an opportunity. We are here to work. He can see that we are not bad people. If he just gives us an opportunity, we can showcase that.”Throughout Foley Square, protesters, with some donning green bandanas around their faces, held handwritten signs that read “Melt Ice” as well as: “To get our neighbors, you have to get through us!”View image in fullscreenDave Schmauch, a member of the Freedom Socialist party, held a sign with a message to New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, who has in recent months taken a hardened stance against immigration. “Immigrants are not your get out of jail card!” the sign read, in reference to Adams’s own federal corruption charges, which the newest Trump-appointed justice department has ordered prosecutors to drop.“Today’s protest is just the beginning of what is starting to coalesce into a large, spirited, New York City immigrant solidarity movement,” said Shmauch, adding: “I want everybody to know that we say immigrants are welcome here. New York is an immigrant town and we are going to support and defend our neighbors.”Following several chants including: “Deny, defend, depose, all Nazis got to go!” and: “Every gender, every race, punch a Nazi in the face,” at least 100 protesters, with some beating drums, marched from downtown through the city’s upscale SoHo district, flanked by a heavy police presence that appeared to be twice their numbers.At least six arrests were made, with at least a dozen police appearing to surround one of the protesters as he was pinned to the ground. Around him, other protesters yelled: “Let him go!”Thursday’s rally came as Adams, a moderate Democrat, announced he would reopen an Ice office at the city’s Rikers Island jail. In 2015, an Ice office closed at the jail under the city’s sanctuary laws that impose limitations on the city’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.Also on Thursday, the newly appointed attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that the federal government was suing New York over its immigration policies, accusing state officials of having “chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens”.At one point during the march, Begea stopped in front of the Jacob K Javits federal office building with a crowd of protesters, journalists and police looking on.Accompanied by a fellow protester who repeated after Begea in a call-and-response chant, Begea introduced himself to the crowd, at first quietly before his voice grew louder upon hearing the echoes of the protesters.“My name is Begea. I am a Nicaraguan citizen and I came to this country looking for an opportunity and freedom that I didn’t have in my country,” he said as he became visibly emotional.“We are only asking for the opportunity to be able to express our talent, our ability, to contribute to this country a grain of our help. We do not want to be treated like criminals. We want them to treat us like human beings,” he added.At the end of his chant, Begea raised his fist in the air.“La libertad,” he yelled.“La libertad,” the protesters yelled back. More

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      Humberto Ortega, Former Military Chief in Nicaragua, Dies at 77

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      Mr. Ortega, the estranged brother of President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, had been under house arrest for months after making statements that infuriated his sibling.Humberto Ortega Saavedra, the former chief of the armed forces of Nicaragua and younger brother of the current president, who publicly questioned his sibling’s “dictatorial” rule only to wind up under house arrest, died on Monday, the Nicaraguan government announced. He was 77.Mr. Ortega had been in ill health for several months with severe heart problems, the Nicaraguan military said in a statement. He died at a military hospital in the country’s capital, Managua.Mr. Ortega was a key member of the leftist Sandinista Front that in 1979 toppled the right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.Along with his brother, Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s current president, he was a member of the nine-man directorate that ruled Nicaragua during a civil war against the U.S.-backed rebels known as the contras that lasted throughout the 1980s.In announcing his death, the government acknowledged his “strategic contribution” as a Sandinista, a movement he joined as an adolescent.“He was known as one of the most important military strategists during the insurrection,” said Mateo Jarquín, a Nicaragua historian at Chapman University in California.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nicaragua Releases 135 Political Prisoners in Deal Brokered by U.S. Government

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      Among those freed under the deal brokered by the U.S. government were 13 affiliated with Mountain Gateway, an American evangelical church.Nicaragua released 135 political prisoners — including 13 people affiliated with an American evangelical church — on humanitarian grounds on Thursday in a deal brokered by the U.S. government, the White House announced.The prisoners were sent to Guatemala, where they will be processed as refugees.The prisoner release included 11 pastors from Mountain Gateway, a Texas-based evangelical missionary church that the Nicaraguan government had accused of using its nonprofit status as a cover to purchase luxury goods, property and land.The group also included Catholic laypeople, students and others whom President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and the first lady and vice president, Rosario Murillo, considered a threat to their authoritarian rule, Jake Sullivan, the National Security adviser, said in a statement.“The United States again calls on the government of Nicaragua to immediately cease the arbitrary arrest and detention of its citizens for merely exercising their fundamental freedoms,” Mr. Sullivan added.Once in Guatemala, the former prisoners will be offered the opportunity to apply for legal ways to rebuild their lives in the United States or in other countries, Mr. Sullivan said. The Biden administration expressed thanks to the president of Guatemala, Bernado Arévalo, for his government’s cooperation in the deal and for “championing democratic freedom.”The Mountain Gateway pastors were arrested in December after completing an eight-city evangelical crusade that cost $4 million and was attended by nearly a million people. The pastors were sentenced to 12 or 15 years in prison, and fined a total of nearly $1 billion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump v Biden: how different are their policies on the US-Mexico border?

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      AnalysisTrump v Biden: how different are their policies on the US-Mexico border?Alexandra Villarreal in Austin Biden’s immigration promises fall short as some of Trump’s policies remain in place – here’s what’s similar and what’s differentUnder Donald Trump, Americans were confronted with a near-constant onslaught of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, especially regarding the US-Mexico border, as the same man who led chants about building a wall there won the 2016 presidential election and took control of the Oval Office for the next four years.Vulnerable migrants were mounting “an invasion”, Trump said. The United States’ asylum system – a key commitment to its humanitarian values – was “ridiculous” and “insane”. Immigrants of color made headlines for supposedly coming here from “shithole” countries, and Mexican immigrants were called drug dealers, criminals and rapists.US turns back growing number of undocumented people after arduous sea journeysRead moreAfter such public vitriol and humanitarian scandals, Joe Biden billed himself as the anti-Trump candidate who would restore honor and decency to the presidency, partly by building a fair and humane immigration system. One of his campaign statements noted: “Most Americans can trace their family history back to a choice – a choice to leave behind everything that was familiar in search of new opportunities and a new life. Joe Biden understands that is an irrefutable source of our strength.”Initially, Biden delivered, with a flurry of executive actions and other first steps to undo Trump’s crackdown. But when the number of people crossing into the US from Mexico without authorization swiftly increased, his more tempered tactics became a political liability, giving Republicans fuel to spin false yet convincing – to some – narratives about an “open” and mismanaged border.Soon, Biden’s top political operatives started pushing him to adopt a more hardline approach, while some of his immigration experts jumped ship, unable to stomach enforcing some of the same Trump-era practices they loathed.Amid such an ideological quagmire, a reactive, confusing and often contradictory immigration agenda has emerged from this administration. And now, new policies are being admonished by advocates – and even some serving Democrats – for seemingly plagiarizing Trump’s very own playbook, without meaningful input from Congress or organizations on the ground.So is the Biden White House simply a more politically correct Trump 2.0 on immigration at the US-Mexico border? We compare and contrast.Enforcing deterrenceMuch of both Trump and Biden’s border strategies are predicated on the notion that if the US government erects enough barriers and gets rid of enough incentives, people will stop trying to come.Thus far, that theory hasn’t really panned out – the US has continued to experience record-breaking numbers of migrants and asylum seekers at its south-west boundary, despite decades of presidents pursuing this paradigm of prevention through deterrence. But, at a border that is already hyper-politicized, hyper-policed and hyper-surveilled, the last two administrations have still largely relied on the enforcement-focused infrastructures and blueprints inherited from their predecessors.Recently, the Biden administration announced it would step up expedited removal, despite having previously rescinded Trump’s own sweeping expansion of these fast-tracked deportations. Under the practice, migrants can be swiftly repatriated without ever seeing a judge.Biden officials have also said they will be proposing a new rule to further limit asylum eligibility, a move that has incited anger among advocates who already fought similar bans under Trump.Expelled to dangerThe most infamous through-line between Trump and Biden’s approaches to people arriving at the US-Mexico border today has been both administrations’ controversial use of a health law to deny millions of migrants and would-be asylum seekers the opportunity to ask for protection, seemingly in violation of their rights domestically and internationally.Many people subjected to this policy – often referred to by its shorthand, Title 42 – have been stranded in or expelled to dangerous conditions in Mexico, or else swiftly returned to the unstable and sometimes life-threatening realities at home that many of them risked life and limb to escape. Others die trying to circumvent closed-off points of entry.The Trump administration invoked Title 42 ostensibly as a public health measure during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and used it to quickly expel hundreds of thousands of people – including nearly 16,000 unaccompanied children.Biden stopped applying the aggressive policy to unaccompanied kids but has continued to expel individuals and families. Many stuck in Mexico because of Title 42 have subsequently been murdered, raped or kidnapped, with more than 13,480 reports of violent attacks during Biden’s presidency alone.Although the Biden administration eventually announced it was planning to end Title 42 restrictions last year, pending litigation has kept them in place for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, even as officials publicly argue against reliance on the policy, they have expanded its use multiple times, abruptly, to target Venezuelans and now also Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans.Those policy changes have been accompanied by the creation of limited legal pathways, but their eligibility requirements demand a level of financial resources and international connections that the western hemisphere’s most vulnerable, forcibly displaced people likely cannot produce.“Do not just show up at the border,” Biden warned potential migrants. “Stay where you are and apply legally from there.”Families, still separatedPart of Trump’s enduring legacy is tied to being the president who separated families at the US-Mexico border and threw “kids in cages” for days or weeks, often with little communication or information provided to keep track of them.In 2018, Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy shook liberals and conservatives alike as they learned about terrified children being ripped from the arms of parents who were now being prosecuted. Trump was eventually forced to end these hyper-visible family separations, but he continued to advance hardline practices that adversely affected children and families seeking help at the US’s south-west boundary, whether stranding young kids in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody or in hazardous Mexican border towns.Biden, by contrast, has stopped holding migrant families in Ice detention, so far. He also resumed programs that allow some from the Caribbean and Central America to reunite with family members in the US, and a task force is still trying to reconnect families separated by the Trump administration.Yet even as Biden tries to clean up Trump’s mess, de facto family separations continue. Unaccompanied children are exempt from Title 42, so some parents make the difficult choice to send their kids across the border alone, even when that means indefinite time apart.Love across the border: a couple’s 13-year quest to be reunited in the USRead moreThe bottom lineSo are Biden’s border policies turning into a copy of Trump’s?The reality is more nuanced, with a long history of bad approaches to humanitarian migration across presidents and some positive moves toward solutions from Biden, bolstered by a different rhetoric, new alternative legal pathways and attempts at more efficient processing.Yet parallels exist. Most notably, both administrations have done devastating harm to millions of forcibly displaced people, who came here looking for safety and opportunity only to become victims of a system that has left them stranded and vulnerable.And with Biden now shifting to the center and immigration looming as a liability issue in the 2024 presidential election for Democrats – most of whom get sucked into the xenophobic right-wing narrative without figuring out how to defend the benefits of the American melting pot – progressives, advocates – and millions of migrants – should brace for a tough foreseeable future.TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderUS politicsBiden administrationTrump administrationNicaraguaHondurasanalysisReuse this content More

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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown

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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown Advocates attack president’s failure to uphold campaign pledges ahead of first visit to southern border since he took officeUnder pressure to address a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border, Joe Biden announced a far-reaching crackdown on migrants seeking asylum last week, expanding the use of a controversial public health measure known as Title 42 to restrict people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela from illegally entering the US, while offering those legally seeking relief a new pathway to America.Before the president’s first trip to the US-Mexico border since he took office in 2020, immigration advocates condemned the Biden administration’s decision to expand Title 42 as disheartening and a failure to uphold his campaign promises. They took some solace in the creation of a legal pathway to asylum for those in four countries, but still, for them, Biden’s actions were not enough – they leave out other migrants, and the parole program is beset by requirements that impose significant barriers to migrants without access to resources, perpetuating inequities within the US immigration system.In other words, immigration advocates say, the cost of expanded expulsion of migrants under the guise of public health without a clear path to asylum outweighs the promise of expanded refugee access and a legal outlet for asylum. “For a lot of us working in immigration justice, at the start of the administration, there was incredible hope that Title 42 would end and push forward to re-establish access to asylum,” the director of the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, Alex Miller, said. “We’ve been disappointed.”The Biden administration’s so-called “carrot and stick” approach aims to deter the historic-high millions of migrants fleeing persecution from their home countries and seeking US asylum from entering the country illegally. Federal figures from the 2022 fiscal year show that US border agents stopped migrants more than 2m times along the southern border, setting an all-time record. They turned migrants away under the Title 42 provision more than 1m times.“The problem is the carrot is not universally accessible,” Miller added. “Legal access to asylum will be limited to those who are the right nationalities, have the right means and support, to apply for parole … The sticks they are offering are restricting access, and that’s not a fair trade.”Under the Biden administration’s new policy, if migrants from those countries pass background checks, buy a plane ticket, obtain financial sponsorship, and meet other requirements, they would be allowed to legally enter under the “parole program”. They would be authorized to live and work in the US for two years.But immigration advocates worry about the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed rule – which they say is similar to the Donald Trump White House’s “transit ban” – because it would make migrants seeking asylum ineligible if they failed to seek protection in a third country before reaching the US and if they “circumvent available, established pathways to lawful migration,” as homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week.They also worried that the parole program’s requirements – modeled after the administration’s approach to refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Ukraine – impose barriers to migrants who lack the resources to buy flights and find a financial sponsor.On Twitter, United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led rights group, slammed Biden’s new policy “a racist and classist attack” on migrants. United We Dream’s deputy director of federal advocacy, Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 would hurt “the same people seeking asylum that they purport to protect”.The American Civil Liberties Union’s director of border strategies, Jonathan Blazer, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s “knee-jerk expansion of Title 42 will put more lives in grave danger”, adding that his plan “ties his administration to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump era instead of restoring fair access to asylum protections”.“His commitments to people seeking safety will ring utterly hollow if he moves forward in substituting one illegal anti-asylum Trump policy for another,” Blazer said.Miller told the Guardian that the administration’s new proposals include allowing asylum seekers to use an app in English and Spanish to schedule appointments. That, the administration argues, will reduce “wait times and crowds at the US port of entry and allow for safe, orderly, and humane processing”. Miller said that effort makes the legal asylum seeking process harder for migrants who lack technological access and speak indigenous dialects beyond Spanish as well as for those who cannot obtain legal representation to help them navigate the process.Biden has said that Congress needs to enact a more comprehensive immigration reform. In the interim, the administration’s new parole process, which he described as “safe, orderly” and humane, would “make things better but will not fix the border problem completely”.The National Immigration Law Center’s vice-president of law and policy, Lisa Graybill, told the Guardian that while the administration’s creation of the asylum that gives 30,000 people access is better than nothing, its overall approach reflects seeing immigration enforcement and creating outlets for asylum as a “zero-sum game”. It’s a mistake presidents and politicians have made before, she said.She added that Biden had been “following an old playbook that does not work” by allocating resources toward enforcement rather than creating a “humane and orderly processing system that is built around recognizing the right to asylum instead of violating it”. Instead, the parole program as designed, she said, will hurt impoverished migrants and those who fled their countries in haste without meeting all requirements, acting as barriers to even those who have legitimate asylum claims while helping middle and higher income migrants with access to resources.The chief adviser for policy and partnerships at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Angela Kelley, said that Biden’s creation of the parole program was “smart” and reflected an attempt to use the “tools in his toolbox and use them in more creative ways”. She pointed out that the Biden administration aimed to triple the number of refugees resettled seeking asylum from Latin American and Caribbean countries. Yet, she added, the outdated US immigration laws have not kept up with who qualifies for asylum, such as those fleeing the damaging effects of climate change.“That’s the difference maker: under Trump, it was all about kicking out people – they were systematic in dismantling the refugee program, legal immigration channels of people coming for employment for families, for students. That’s not the approach of the Biden administration,” Kelley said, noting that it will take time to see the effects Biden’s actions will take on the migration system. “They’re restoring all of that. The unfortunate continued reliance on Title 42 is a monkey on their back that they have to figure out how to shake and use the resources you have … to try [to] manage the migration of people the best you can.”Title 42’s future is uncertain as the US supreme court in December stopped Biden’s administration from ending the program to give the justices more time to weigh in on whether states have the legal grounds to intervene in an ongoing case over the program.Kelley, who had previously done immigration work for Biden and the Barack Obama White House, saw the expansion of its Title 42 program as “worrisome” for vulnerable migrants who would be sent back to dangerous conditions in Mexico. She noted that by creating legal pathways to asylum, the administration is trying to “to ease the pressures” at the US border in the hope that they wouldn’t need the pandemic program any longer.“What is heartbreaking is that in an effort to limit the number of people who are coming, you are turning away asylum seekers, who are the migrants you want to protect,” Kelley said.Immigration advocates and Biden agree that long-term changes needed to come from Congress – a questionable prospect given that the Republican-controlled House struggled to elect its speaker, and past bipartisan efforts at immigration reform had also failed.Even so, some advocates say now it’s a question of where resources are sent: They called for more resources to be directed toward assisting nonprofits and NGO groups working with asylum seekers at the border, hiring more asylum officers and more immigration judges, and investing in more legal assistance for migrants unable to afford private attorneys.“For three years under Title 42, access to asylum has been undermined,” Miller said. “All of the documented evidence of kidnapping, rape, and extortion of migrants in Mexico, in particular at the border – it’s incredibly troubling that we’re expanding the expulsions of migrants to Mexico.“These are not just numbers, these are people with individual stories with their own lives they’re trying to defend. It’s really easy to get lost in the big picture. We’re talking about people here.”TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsUS-Mexico borderVenezuelaHaitiCubaNicaraguanewsReuse this content More