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      ‘I can’t plan ahead’: Dreamers speak out as US program faces new threat

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      ‘I can’t plan ahead’: Dreamers speak out as US program faces new threatImmigrants express frustration as nine Republican-led states ask judge to end Obama-era program that gives temporary deportation relief It’s been almost 10 years since Areli Hernandez received her first US government work permit in her mailbox. Hernandez remembers staring at her own photograph and touching the scripted name on the card in disbelief, feeling that a long-sought dream had finally materialized.US court orders review of landmark immigration program for DreamersRead moreBut earlier this week, the program that gives temporary deportation relief to Hernandez and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants known as Dreamers, allowing a chance to live and work legally in the US, came under threat once again in a federal court.Nine Republican-led states asked Judge Andrew Hanen in Texas to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy, a request that if successful would stop nearly 600,000 immigrants brought to the US as undocumented children from being able to renew their work permits and continue to be protected from potential deportation.“I can’t plan ahead because my future consists of judges’ decisions,” said Hernandez, who was born in Mexico City and brought to the US at the age of five in the late 1980s. Hernandez was referring to her own Daca status, which is set to expire later this year. “I want to make choices that don’t depend on my card and an expiration date.”The latest filing from the coalition of states led by Texas denounced Daca as “unlawful” and “unconstitutional”. The states urged Hanen to strike down the program, which was fortified by the Biden administration as a federal regulation last year after originally being created by the Obama administration in 2012.Since its implementation, Daca has lifted the threat of deportation for approximately 825,000 individuals lacking legal status who were brought to the US by age 16 and before 15 June 2007, have studied in a US school or served in the military and don’t have a serious criminal record.The name Dreamers originated with a bill first proposed in the 2001-2002 Congress, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, but which did not pass. Obama referred to these so-called Dreamers as “young people, who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans”.Daca was meant to be a stopgap until Congress passed immigration reform legislation and put Dreamers like Hernandez on a path to US citizenship. That has not happened and instead the program – and Dreamers’ futures – end up batted back and forth by the courts.Last year Kevin McCarthy, now speaker of the House, called “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants a “nonstarter” and the only immigration policy his Republican House majority would support was “securing” the US-Mexico border.Donald Trump had announced as president that he was scrapping Daca. This was blocked by the courts, including the US supreme court in 2020, but still left Dreamers in turmoil.Then-rival presidential candidate Joe Biden pledged that he would change things, saying: “As president, I will immediately work to make Daca permanent by sending a bill to Congress on day one of my administration.”Biden did so, but immigration reform legislation is still stuck in Congress. Then states hostile to Daca persuaded Hanen in July 2021 to ban new applicants.Hernandez was a student in southern California in the early 2000s, before Daca.She told the Guardian this week: “I learned that I couldn’t be a social worker because in order to apply for a license I needed a social security number,” adding that as an undocumented immigrant: “I was also looking at programs that had federal grants that required US citizenship, and again, I couldn’t.”She worked as a janitor before graduating in psychology from California State University, Northridge, then spent years working under weekly or monthly contracts in jobs unrelated to her degree.It wasn’t until Hernandez, 39, became a Daca recipient in 2013 that she landed a full-time position at the non-profit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla), where she earned enough to do a master’s in public administration, and is now director of executive affairs.Many of the almost 600,000 current Dreamers are essential workers who have supported the nation’s classrooms and hospitals throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. They are also sports stars, award-winning journalists and academics, or successful in countless other walks of life.Dreamers pump billions into the US economy and, according to the progressive thinktank the Center for American Progress, households with Daca recipients pay almost $10bn in taxes each year.When the Dream Act was introduced on Capitol Hill in 2001, Juliana Macedo do Nascimento coincidentally arrived in Buena Park, Orange county, California, from Brazil at the age of 14.Since 2001 at least 11 versions of the Dream Act have been introduced in Congress but never passed.“We really see the cruelty of what Texas and the other plaintiffs are asking for, it’s just anti-immigrant rhetoric,” said Macedo do Nascimento, who now lives in Baltimore. “It’s all part of this narrative that mostly brown people shouldn’t be in this country.”Her current Daca protections expire in March 2024 and Dreamers once again wait in anxious limbo, first for Hanen’s ruling then, if he agrees to shut down Daca, the likely Biden appeal all the way back up to the now-conservative-controlled supreme court.“Daca recipients are allowed to buy houses, buy cars, and have these long-term debts,” said Macedo do Nascimento, 37, referring to the typical American burdens of student loans, mortgages and vehicle financing. “But we can’t plan a family. We deserve a path to citizenship, it will allow us to have a sense of security.”TopicsDream ActUS immigrationUS politicsTexasMexicofeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texas national guard soldier shoots and wounds migrant at Mexico border

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      Texas national guard soldier shoots and wounds migrant at Mexico borderInjuries not life-threatening after soldier fires at migrant in the shoulder as he was attempting to detain migrant A Texas national guard soldier has shot and wounded a migrant in the shoulder along the US-Mexico border.According to Texas military records reviewed by the Military Times and the Texas Tribune, the soldier fired at the migrant on 15 January as he was attempting to detain the migrant.The shooting is believed to be the first time that a national guard member deployed to the border as part of Texas’s border security mission Operation Lone Star has shot and injured a migrant.The incident occurred west of McAllen, Texas, at around 4.20am when two national guard soldiers and border patrol agents tracked several migrants to an abandoned house.Records reviewed by the Military Times and the Texas Tribune showed that upon the two soldiers entering the house, three of the migrants surrendered. A fourth migrant tried to escape from a window and one of the soldiers attempted to apprehend the migrant.The migrant was reported to have wrestled with the soldier and struck him with his fists and elbows. At one point, the soldier drew his M17 pistol, fired once and shot the migrant.Military records reviewed by the outlets does not indicate that the migrant had fired any weapons towards the soldier. It remains unclear whether the soldier intended to fire his gun.The soldier has been identified as specialist Angel Gallegos. Gallegos shot the migrant in his left shoulder who was then transported to McAllen Medical Center for evaluation and treatment, the outlets reported. The migrant’s injuries are not life-threatening.According to a federal law enforcement source who spoke to CNN, the migrant was from El Salvador.“Customs and bBorder protection’s office of professional responsibility is reviewing the incident,” US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Rod Kise told CNN.TopicsUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationUS militaryUS politicsTexasnewsReuse this content 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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      Eric Adams says New York City doesn’t have ‘room’ to host more migrants

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      Eric Adams says New York City doesn’t have ‘room’ to host more migrants Mayor says city’s strained care system can’t handle influx and blames government for lack of coordination during El Paso visit In an unprecedented visit by a New York City mayor to the Mexico border, Eric Adams said his city doesn’t have enough “room” to host more migrants in its strained care system.He made his remarks on Sunday at a news conference during his trip to El Paso, Texas, the first visit of its kind by a New York mayor, after an ongoing crisis sparked by the controversial decision of some Republican governors in the south to send migrants to mostly Democratic-administered municipalities around the US.“No city deserves what is happening. This is a beautiful city,” he said of El Paso, “and what happened over the last few months undermines this city”.He echoed the same thoughts for Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington.“We don’t deserve this, migrants don’t deserve this, and the people who live in this city don’t deserve this,” he added.Since September, thousands of migrants – about 3,100 according to Adams’s estimate – have been bused to New York City from Texas by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, without New York’s agreement. Many of the migrants have been sent involuntarily and often with no direction on where to go after arriving.The city has housed them in homeless shelters, which were already overcrowded, not to mention often avoided by homeless people themselves due to the shelter system’s record of abuse and violence.He said more than 800 migrants came in a single day. “That is a record in our city,” he said.Adams blamed a lack of coordination from the federal government and said he will be raising the issue in the United States Conference of Mayors, which starts on Tuesday.“This crisis has mayors pitted against each other. And that can’t happen,” he said.He also suggested that the image of New York being a welcoming city for migrants is misleadingly glamorized.“We have to give people accurate information,” he said, adding that those with sponsors and family members are welcome.“We welcome those the city doesn’t have to have in their care system,” he added. “But that should not come at the price tag of those New Yorkers.”A video shared by Adams’s press secretary, Fabien Levy, shows the mayor speaking with a man in a border patrol uniform who is seen trying to explain to him how some people use ladders to cross the border wall.In another video, Adams tells a group of asylum seekers that he will “fight” for them to work so that they can “experience the American dream”. His message, once translated, sparked cheers and applause from the group of asylum seekers.Outside Sacred Heart Church, asylum seekers overwhelmingly raise their hands to tell @NYCMayor they want to work.Mayor Adams has been calling on the federal government to expedite work authorization for asylum seekers since last year. pic.twitter.com/K4aFYgW8n3— Fabien Levy (@Fabien_Levy) January 15, 2023
      It is unclear where he believes asylum seekers should be placed after arriving in the US. As of publication time the mayor’s office had not yet responded to a request for clarification.TopicsUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationNew YorkEric AdamsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US turns back growing number of undocumented people after arduous sea journeys

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      US turns back growing number of undocumented people after arduous sea journeysBiden shifts toward political center as likely presidential rival Ron DeSantis calls out national guard Authorities in Florida have been turning back growing numbers of undocumented Cubans and Haitians arriving by sea in recent weeks as more attempt to seek haven in the US.Local US residents on jet skis have been helping some of the migrants who attempted to swim ashore after making arduous, life-threateningand days-long journeys in makeshift vessels.Joe Biden’s turn to the center over immigration comes as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, attempts to plot his own strategy for handling a sensitive situation in the south of his state, calling out national guard troops in a hardline approach.Last Thursday, the US Coast Guard returned another 177 Cuban migrants to their island nation, while scores of Haitians who swam ashore in Miami were taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).As the Cuban exodus continues, Biden adjusts immigration policyRead moreThe coastguard says that since 1 October, it has intercepted and returned more than 4,900 Cubans at sea, compared with about 6,100 in the 12 months to 30 September.DeSantis, seen as a likely contender for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has taken swipes at the White House for what he claims are Biden’s “lawless” immigration policies and perceived open borders.The Biden administration has hit back, accusing DeSantis of “making a mockery” of the immigration system by staging his own series of political stunts, including an episode last year in which he sent a planeload of mostly Venezuelan migrants to Massachusetts, flying them from Texas at Florida taxpayers’ expense.The governor is under criminal investigation in Texas and defending a separate lawsuit over the flight, and another to Biden’s home state of Delaware that was canceled, which reports said involved covert operatives linked to DeSantis recruiting migrants at a San Antonio motel with false promises of housing and jobs.In the latest incidents of migrants attempting to land in south Florida, the TV station WPLG spotted city of Miami marine patrol jet skis rescuing at least two people found swimming in the ocean, and a CBP spokesperson, Michael Selva, said beachgoers on Virginia Key had helped others ashore on Thursday using small boats and jet skis.Two days earlier, another group of about 25 people made landfall near Fort Lauderdale. Authorities arrested 12, while others ran away.Increasing numbers of people are risking their lives to reach the US despite stricter policies from the Biden administration intended to deter irregular immigration and increase humanitarian visa numbers for Cubans, and others, to enter legally – but with a high bar to entry unattainable to many of the thousands fleeing existential threats including extreme violence, political oppression, severe poverty and hardships exacerbated by the climate crisis or failed states.Biden has responded to conservative voices inside the Democratic party and Republicans calling for a tougher stance. But critics say the president’s new “carrot and stick” approach, cracking down on undocumented immigration while appearing to offer an olive branch of more visas, presents obstacles that most migrants would struggle to overcome.Biden’s ‘carrot and stick’ approach to deter migrants met with angerRead moreThe White House says up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will be admitted to the US, but only if they apply online, can pay their own airfare and find a financial sponsor.Writing in the Guardian last week, Moustafa Bayoumi, immigration author and professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, said Biden was “throwing migrants under the bus”.“This is a program obviously designed to favor those with means and pre-established connections in the US, and it’s hard to imagine it as anything but meaningless for those forced to flee for their lives without money or planning,” he said.DeSantis, seeking to build political capital from a president many expect him to challenge for the White House in 2024, accused Biden of under-resourcing the federal response to the Florida arrivals and placing a burden on local law enforcement.Meanwhile, the impact of the recent increase in migrant landing attempts continues to be felt in south Florida. The Dry Tortugas national park, off the Florida Keys, has only just reopened after being turned into a makeshift processing center for hundreds of people earlier this month.TopicsUS immigrationFloridaJoe BidenRon DeSantisUS politicsMigrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden visits border for first time as critics condemn his migrant crackdown

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      Biden visits border for first time as critics condemn his migrant crackdown President makes brief stop in El Paso, ground zero for the consequences of US system that he acknowledges is deeply brokenPresident Joe Biden on Sunday landed in Texas to visit the US-Mexico border for the first time in his nearly two years as commander-in-chief, even as lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates have widely condemned his administration’s latest hardline response to the deepening humanitarian emergency there.Biden – who is due in Mexico City this week for an international summit – made a brief pit stop in El Paso, a recent ground zero for the consequences of a US immigration system that he has readily acknowledged is deeply broken.Biden’s ‘carrot and stick’ approach to deter migrants met with angerRead moreThe reliably blue border city in blood red Texas has been struggling for months to triage thousands of stranded migrants and asylum seekers, many of whom have had little choice but to sleep on the streets in cold, rain, and squalor.Biden greeted local politicians at the airport, including Texas’s hardline Republican governor Greg Abbott, who has courted controversy with his stringent border policies, including bussing migrants to Democratic cities in the north-east. Abbott handed Biden a letter that read in part: “Your visit to our southern border with Mexico today is $20bn too little and two years too late.”Biden then later traveled to the Bridge of the Americas border crossing, where northbound cars lined up to cross into El Paso from Juárez, Mexico. Wearing a suit and his trademark sunglasses, Biden chatted to local law enforcement officers and watched demonstrations of bordering policing, including by a canine unit searching a car for contrabrand food items as well as other techniques for finding drugs or helping migrants in medical distress. The meetings took place with no press present aside from those watching at a distance.Biden’s first trip to the US-Mexico border since ascending to the nation’s highest office follows a record-breaking fiscal year of roughly 2.4 million migrant encounters there, amid a new normal of mass forced displacement because of regional instability, growing wealth disparities, climate disaster, and targeted persecution in various countries throughout the hemisphere.It also comes mere days after the administration announced new changes to federal migration-related policies, which engendered immediate and intense backlash from pro-immigrant organizations and progressive members of Biden’s own party.“For once, just once, I’d like to see this administration make the moral argument to the rest of the country that we need to put in place an effective, humane, accessible, welcoming, and compassionate system of protection at the border,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of El Paso’s Hope Border Institute.Instead, Corbett excoriated the administration’s new approach as an entrenchment of “dangerous, ineffective, and inhumane policy” and equated the strategy to “a broken promise”.These latest policy developments, announced Thursday, include an even more severe crackdown at the US-Mexico border through the increased use of expedited removal, where migrants are rapidly deported without ever seeing a judge.They also expand a highly criticized Trump-era practice that allows border authorities to quickly expel migrants and would-be asylum seekers back to Mexico or elsewhere, without even the chance to ask for asylum.This controversial measure – which began amid the pandemic as an invocation of public health law but has warped into a cynical immigration tool – will now be deployed to target Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans for expulsion to Mexico, after a similar move against Venezuelans in October was followed by a significant drop in the number of people from that country arriving at the US-Mexico border.The Biden administration coupled these heightened deterrence mechanisms, in part, with an announcement of more legal pathways for at least temporary admittance to the US for a limited number of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans who can afford to bankroll their own commercial travel, own an unexpired passport, and have someone stateside who is willing to sponsor their application, alongside other requirements.Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the administration’s recent moves to reporters traveling with Biden. “What we’re trying to do is broadly incentivize, safe and orderly way, and cut out the smuggling organizations. So what what we’re trying to have is to incentivize them to come to the ports of entry instead of in between the points of entry,” he said.But critics have pointed out that few of the most vulnerable forcibly displaced people within the hemisphere can actually furnish the wealth, resources and connections to meet such narrow criteria.Detractors also expressed alarm and disdain over news that the Biden administration would be advancing a new rule to further restrict asylum eligibility, drawing comparisons between the Democratic president and his right-wing predecessor.“This week’s policy announcements are completely out of touch with the actual circumstances of people seeking asylum, many of whom arrive at our border fleeing imminent threats to their lives,” said Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.“It has been deeply disturbing to hear the president affirm that seeking asylum is legal, pledge to create a safe and humane process at the border, and then turn around and announce policies that further undermine access to the US asylum process.”The implications of Biden’s border strategies to date have already been deeply felt in El Paso, where vulnerable Venezuelans and other nationalities scared of being expelled back to Mexico have started evading U.S. authorities and been consequently denied access to some of the city’s shelters.Huge crowds of migrants have been languishing on the streets in downtown El Paso and outside of the city’s Sacred Heart Church for weeks. Desperate mothers have had to worry about their babies potentially freezing to death when temperatures drop.Some of these people have felt stranded, afraid that if they try to leave the city they’ll run into immigration enforcement at a checkpoint and end up detained or expelled. Others never even had the chance to take that risk, after immigration officials rounded up and detained scores of them in the last few days.In chaotic footage obtained by NBC News, local police and border agents inundated the streets around Sacred Heart Church’s shelter Tuesday night, sirens blazing, as they apprehended what a witness estimated to be between 100 and 150 people.Experts warned the operation – so close to a place of worship – may have in fact violated the Department of Homeland Security’s own guidance, NBC News reported.A similar action in the city’s downtown cleared out migrants who had been staying near a local bus terminal on Wednesday night, according to media organization El Paso Matters.“The cynic in me contemplates the possibility that this was a cleanup action intended to showcase El Paso in a particular light and the president’s enforcement actions in a particular light,” Lisa Graybill, vice president of law and policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told NBC News.Yet for Isabel Salcido, a city representative for El Paso, Biden’s trip was more about him finally bearing witness.“This crisis is not going away,” Salcido said. “We desperately need the help and leadership of Congress and the White House.”TopicsUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationUS politicsnewsReuse 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

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      More migrants bussed to Kamala Harris’s home on Christmas Eve

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      More migrants bussed to Kamala Harris’s home on Christmas EveThree buses of Central and South American migrants arrived to the vice-president’s home from Texas Three busloads of migrants were dropped off outside the Washington DC home of US vice-president Kamala Harris late on Christmas Eve, the latest episode in an escalating battle between the Joe Biden White House and the governors of southern Republican states over federal immigration policy.‘A storm is coming’: migrants stuck on US-Mexico border as temperatures plummetRead moreThe Central and South American migrants, believed to be sent from Texas, were dropped off in below-freezing temperatures, with some wearing only sweatshirts and shorts.Texas’s far-right governor, Greg Abbott, has previously sent buses to Harris’s Naval Observatory home. An organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, Amy Fischer, told local news station ABC7 that Abbott orchestrated the drop off as a political stunt.“It really does show the cruelty behind governor Abbott and his insistence on continuing to bus people here without care about people arriving late at night on Christmas Eve when the weather is so cold,” Fischer said.The group took the travelers to the shelter of a local church where they were given warm food and clothes.Tatiana Laborde with Samu First Response, an aid group that was also there to meet the buses, said that similar drops had been made in Washington since April. “Christmas Eve and freezing cold weather is no different,” Laborde told CNN. “We are always here welcoming folks with open arms.”The arrivals were the latest salvo in an effort by Abbott to force the Biden administration to step up immigration controls at the US border with Mexico. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis and Arizona’s governor Doug Ducey have also transported migrants to cities that are run by Democrats.“You and your administration must stop the lie that the border is secure and instead immediately deploy federal assets to address the dire problems you have caused,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Biden last week.Abbott added: “You must execute the duties that the US constitution mandates you perform and secure the southern border before more innocent lives are lost.”On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection reported that 233,740 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in November, marking the highest number ever recorded for the month. The border agency reported that of 204,000 “unique encounters”, 35% were from Cuba and Nicaragua.‘No money, nowhere to stay’: asylum seekers wait as Trump’s border restrictions drag onRead moreIn a statement released on Saturday, the federal homeland security department said it “continues to fully enforce our immigration and public health laws at the border”.“As temperatures remain dangerously low all along the border, no one should put their lives in the hands of smugglers, or risk life and limb attempting to cross only to be returned,” the Department of Homeland Security added, warning that “anyone attempting to enter without authorization is subject to expulsion” under the policy known as Title 42.Last week, the US supreme court temporarily suspended the expiration of the policy empowering border officials to turn away asylum seekers on public health grounds. The Trump White House imposed it during the early phases of the Covid-19 pandemic.Days before Title 42 was due to expire, the border city of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency after migrant numbers surged. If allowed to expire, Abbott has warned that the number of people entering the US illegally “will only increase”.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsKamala HarrisBiden administrationWashington DCnewsReuse this content More