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      New York will allow non-citizens to vote under controversial law

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      New York will allow non-citizens to vote under controversial law A watershed moment for the most populous US city as opponents vow to challenge the law More than 800,000 non-citizens and “Dreamers” could vote in New York City municipal elections as early as next year, after Mayor Eric Adams allowed legislation to become law on Sunday.Opponents have vowed to challenge the law, which the city council approved a month ago. Unless a judge halts its implementation, New York is the first major US city to grant widespread municipal voting rights to non-citizens.More than a dozen communities across the US allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. Non-citizens cannot vote for president or Congress, or in state elections.The New York board of elections must begin an implementation plan by July, including registration rules and provisions to create separate ballots for municipal races.New York mayor Eric Adams faces nepotism claim over job for brotherRead moreIt’s a watershed moment for the most populous US city, where legally documented non-citizens comprise nearly one in nine of 7 million voting-age inhabitants. The movement to win voting rights for non-citizens prevailed after numerous setbacks.The measure would allow non-citizens who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days, as well as those authorized to work in the US, including Dreamers, to help select the mayor, council members, borough presidents, comptroller and public advocate.Dreamers are young migrants brought to the US illegally as children who would benefit from the never-passed Dream Act, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows them to remain in the US if they meet certain criteria.The first elections in which non-citizens would be allowed to vote are in 2023.“We build a stronger democracy when we include the voices of immigrants,” said former council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who led the charge for the legislation.Rodriguez, who Adams appointed transportation commissioner, thanked the mayor for his support and expects a vigorous defense against any legal challenges.Adams raised concern about the month-long residency standard, but later said those concerns did not mean he would veto the bill. While there was some question whether Adams could stop the bill, a 30-day time limit to take action expired at the stroke of midnight.Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Adams said: “I did not change my mind. I supported the concept of the bill. The one aspect of that I had a problem with and I thought was problematic was the 30-day part.“… I’m a big believer in conversation, we have to start talking to each other and not at each other. And after hearing [colleagues’] rationale and their theories behind it, I thought it was more important to not veto the bill.”Adams added: “In New York City, 47% of Brooklyn speak a language other than English at home. And so I think it’s imperative that people who are in a local municipality have the right to decide who’s going to govern them, and I support the overall concept of that bill.”Former mayor Bill de Blasio had similar concerns to Adams but did not move to veto the measure before vacating City Hall at the end of the year.Opponents say the council lacks the authority on its own to grant voting rights to noncitizens and should have first sought action by state lawmakers.Some states, including Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and Florida, have adopted rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City.Asked what he would say to people who say the bill “makes a mockery of the idea of American citizenship”, Adams told CNN: “You know, membership has its privileges.“Being a member of what we call United States of America is a great privilege and I would tell them to keep doing it … don’t let anything take you away from that mission. This legislation is not going to do that. Keep becoming a citizen of this country.”TopicsNew YorkEric AdamsUS politicsUS immigrationnewsReuse this content More

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      How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping for

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      How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping for Advocates are critical of the immigration policy’s reinstatement, while asylum seekers see the plan as better than nothing from the USEvery day feels like a bad dream to Timoty Correas. He spent five months in a jam-packed tent camp before moving weeks ago to a roach-infested hotel full of migrant families in a neighborhood, blocks from the US border where, he said, during the night local crime cartels would load crowds of smuggled people in and out of houses used as hiding places.Like thousands of other people here, Correas and his eight-year-old son are stranded at the US border, always hoping that hardline pandemic-related restrictions will cease and the processing of asylum seekers by the US will resume.Correas, a vegetable seller, fled Honduras to try to find his parents in Houston, Texas, after gang members took over his house with death threats in May. He planned to seek asylum in the US.‘People with no names’: the drowned migrants buried in pauper’s gravesRead moreCorreas traveled a month with smugglers through Mexico alongside a tide of other northbound migrants and reached Reynosa, across from Hidalgo, Texas, towards the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, in June.But he and his son found the border essentially closed to asylum seekers.Then, when he recently heard on TV news that the US would begin processing asylum cases through a reboot of former president Donald Trump’s controversial Remain in Mexico program, known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), he was hopeful.Although the program would promise a further six-month wait, it was the best news he’d gotten since the summer.“As I understand it, MPP will apply to families,” he said. “They’ll give us an opportunity to speak with a judge. It feels like a big help, a big step toward entering the US legally.”Immigration advocates, however, are fiercely critical of the court-ordered reinstatement this month of the immigration policy that Joe Biden campaigned to repeal, after Trump forced migrants to wait in Mexico, typically in squalor and danger, while their cases wound interminably through a dysfunctional US system.It was one of the final chapters of Trump’s harsh approach throughout, leaving migrants in limbo and greater numbers risking – and losing – their lives to cross anyway via border desert or river.But for thousands of asylum seekers stranded for months on the border with no end in sight, MPP feels like a sign of movement and better than nothing from the US government, which has been expelling migrants under a rule known as Title 42 and blocking most asylum claims under public health grounds since March of 2020.The latest iteration of MPP has kicked off slowly, enrolling 80 people in its first six days in El Paso, Texas, according to the publication Border Report.The US plans to eventually offer MPP at seven ports of entry across the south-west border, although authorities haven’t given a firm timeline.At a muddy tent camp in Reynosa, aid workers said it remained unclear exactly who would qualify for MPP, how many people it would eventually process or how strictly the government would adhere to humanitarian guidelines it set for itself.“Everyone is real excited about it,” said Felicia Rangel, co-director of the Sidewalk School, an aid organization founded when migrant populations first began to accumulate in this area in 2019. “But it’s not a good thing.”Until Trump brought in MPP in 2019, having already tried to block many asylum claims, those fleeing violence who hoped for political asylum were granted refuge in the US and allowed to join relatives in the country, who act as their sponsors, while their cases were heard.Biden repealed MPP upon taking office but continued Title 42, summarily expelling migrants without a chance to make their case.Up to 2,000 such people are living in a camp six blocks from Reynosa’s city center. An additional 1,150 are in tents in a shelter space supervised by the Pathway of Life church and hundreds more are in other shelters, crowded nearby houses or rooms rented by local charities.“Ninety percent or more don’t plan to return to their country,” said Isaac Castellanos, pastor of the Shaddai Ministry church, which offered to host 125 people in tents on its property in late October as the local migrant population began to overwhelm the city.“The option they are waiting for is through MPP.”He said the city has been discussing a large, federally funded shelter for months, but without progress, forcing small private charities to assume support for the humanitarian debacle.At the camp in Reynosa’s plaza, 35-year-old Belen Dubon keeps an “information desk” at a bench on the road to the bridge to Texas, where new arrivals come daily, expelled from the US after crossing the Rio Grande.Dubon, a nurse from Guatemala City who has lived in this camp for almost six months, said newcomers are easy to recognize because US authorities remove their shoelaces before expelling them and because they are covered in dust.Every day more than 100 people arrive, she said, escorted across the nearby bridge by US border patrol, then released on Mexican soil.Dubon helps them find food at community kitchens in the camp and space on the crowded ground to sleep for their first night. But this camp and surrounding shelters are full, so many people seek a place elsewhere.“Their guides who brought them come back and pick them up,” she said, referring to human smugglers. “I don’t know where they go.”Most people here see no option to give up on waiting, she said, because they spent thousands of dollars of mostly borrowed money to pay smugglers to get them here.Others, like Correas and his son, can’t return home because their houses were taken over by gang members. Others have sent their children across the border unaccompanied, in hope they would be able to apply there to stay, despite the prospect of being detained.Some of those children’s parents in Reynosa told the Guardian they’ll wait as long as they must to reunite.Parents such as Iris Betancourt, 36, who fled Honduras with her husband and three children in August after a local gang boss tried to make her 13-year-old daughter his wife and wound up at the camp in Reynosa.Dangerous and unsanitary conditions kept the three kids mostly penned up in the tent, she said, while Betancourt’s sister in Houston encouraged her to send them to live safely with her.On 31 October, Betancourt and her husband took the kids out for ice-cream, hugged them close all night then paid smugglers $500 per child the next morning to sneak them into the US, where they expected to be apprehended, and would give authorities the contact information for their aunt in Houston.The kids spent a month and seven days in a secure New York City shelter under the US Office of Refugee Resettlement, then arrived in Houston this month, Betancourt said.“I don’t know when I’ll see them again. I don’t know if I’ll wait here for years,” she said, crying. “I wonder every day, will I get in or not? Will the wait be worth the sacrifice?”Aid workers say thousands of children have been similarly sent over by parents in recent months. Figures from US Health and Human Services show more than 13,000 unaccompanied children in government custody as of 10 December, with roughly 500 discharged each day to sponsors across the country. Yet the parents who stay behind at the border face a slim chance of achieving legal entry into the US.Under Trump, MPP had a less-than-1% acceptance rate for asylum cases.Although Biden’s reboot lists new protections for enrolled migrants, it still isn’t clear exactly how the program will operate, said Alex Norman, a former paralegal who helps process emergency immigration parole cases at the camp in Reynosa.“They aren’t going to have the capacity to process thousands of people who are here now,” said Norman, who sits in on calls between DHS officials and local aid organizations.“Or the thousands who are on their way now that they hear there are asylum possibilities.”Eleanor Acer of advocacy group Human Rights First told NPR that MPP was a “humanitarian fiasco” under Trump and would be so under Biden, too.Yet migrants such as Correas, think any sort of shift in US policy is the best news he’s gotten after six months of limbo.His parents fled Honduras in the 1990s when he was a child and his dream of bringing his own son to be with them in a safe city motivates him now to wait indefinitely.“To be with my mom and dad, it will be the greatest gift of my life,” he said. “If I have to wait six or seven months like MPP says, then I’ll have to learn to adapt.”TopicsUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      New York City’s noncitizens will soon be allowed to vote in local elections

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      New York City’s noncitizens will soon be allowed to vote in local elections A measure approved Thursday makes it the largest city to open the ballot box to its 800,000 green card holders and Dreamers New York City could soon become the largest city in the US to give noncitizens the right to vote in local elections, a historic move that would open the ballot box to 800,000 green card holders and Dreamers.The city council approved the measure on Thursday. Only a potential veto from mayor Bill de Blasio stands in the way of the measure becoming law, but the Democrat has said he would not veto it.The council’s vote was a breakthrough moment for an effort that had long languished. Councilman Francisco Moya, whose family hails from Ecuador, choked up as he spoke in support of the bill.New Yorkers reject expanded voting access in stunning resultRead more“This is for my beautiful mother who will be able to vote for her son,” said Moya, while joining the session by video with his immigrant mother at his side.Legally documented, voting-age noncitizens comprise nearly one in nine of the city’s 7 million voting-age inhabitants. The measure would allow noncitizens who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days, as well as those authorized to work in the US, including Dreamers, the children of undocumented immigrants, to help select the city’s mayor, city council members, borough presidents, comptroller and public advocate.“It is no secret, we are making history today. Fifty years down the line when our children look back at this moment they will see a diverse coalition of advocates who came together to write a new chapter in New York City’s history by giving immigrant New Yorkers the power of the ballot,” said councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, a main sponsor of the bill, after Thursday’s vote.More than a dozen communities across the United States already allow noncitizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. But New York City is the largest place by far to give voting rights to noncitizens.Noncitizens still wouldn’t be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in the state elections that pick the governor, judges and legislators. The city’s move is likely to enflame an already contentious debate over voting rights. Last year, Alabama, Colorado and Florida adopted rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City. Arizona and North Dakota already had prohibitions on the books.“The bill we’re doing today will have national repercussions,” said the council’s majority leader, Laurie Cumbo, a Democrat who opposed the bill. She expressed concern that the measure could diminish the influence of African American voters.Noncitizens wouldn’t be allowed to vote until elections in 2023.It’s unclear whether the bill might face legal challenges. City councilman Joseph Borelli, the Republican leader, said such a challenge is likely. Opponents say the council lacks the authority on its own to grant voting rights to noncitizens and should have first sought action by state lawmakers.TopicsNew YorkUS voting rightsUS immigrationUS politicsDream ActnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden administration reinstates Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

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      Biden administration reinstates Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policyBiden called the policy inhumane after Trump administration used it to return over 60,000 asylum seekers across the border Asylum seekers looking to enter the US from its southern border will again be sent to Mexico while their claims are assessed, with the Biden administration announcing the reinstatement of the controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy on Thursday.Remain in Mexico policy needlessly exposed migrants to harm, report saysRead moreThe US and Mexican governments haver agreed to a resumption of the program, put in place by Donald Trump in 2019, following its previous suspension by Joe Biden after he became president. It will initially begin in San Diego and in the Texas cities of Laredo, Brownsville and El Paso next week.Biden had called the arrangement inhumane after it was used by Trump’s administration to return more than 60,000 asylum seekers across the border to Mexico, where they were often preyed upon by criminal gangs. Many people were left waiting for months in limbo in Mexico as their fate was determined.In October, Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said that the program “had endemic flaws, imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulled resources and personnel away from other priority efforts, and did not address the root causes of irregular migration”.However, Republican officials in Missouri and Texas sued Biden’s administration in federal court to prevent the scrapping of the return to Mexico policy, claiming that it would place an undue burden on them from incoming migrants.The supreme court ultimately concurred with the states, placing an injunction on the federal government in August which forced it to resume the program. Since then, federal officials have been negotiating with their Mexican counterparts on how the scheme will resume.Under the reinstated deal, single adult asylum seekers will be the primary focus of the removals, with those transferred offered Covid-19 vaccinations. Mexico will accept asylum seekers from Spanish-speaking countries, the Washington Post reported.The US will aim to complete migrants’ claims within 180 days, amid fears they will be left to languish in Mexico. The US Department of Justice is assigning 22 immigration judges to work specifically on these cases.Supporters of the system have claimed it will help reduce the flow of migrants into the US but advocates have argued that there is little evidence that this will happen and point to the often dire humanitarian situation the program has exacerbated on the border.People expelled by the US often end up in sprawling tent camps or sub-standard housing in places such as Tijuana and Reynosa that often lack basic foods and amenities for asylum seekers.According to Human Rights First, a US human rights group, there have been more than 1,500 cases of reported kidnappings and attacks against migrants subjected to the system, known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), and thousands more under another Trump policy known as Title 42 that uses public health concerns to eject asylum seekers.“President Biden and his administration must stop implementing Trump policies that endanger the lives and safety of people seeking refuge in the United States,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First.Trump’s ‘shameful’ migrant stance condemns thousands to violent limbo in MexicoRead more“Remain in Mexico and other policies that flout asylum laws and treaties are inhumane and unjust. Every day they are in place, they deliver people seeking protection to places where they are targets of brutal attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by deadly cartels and corrupt Mexican officers.”The Biden administration has also been sharply criticized by refugee advocates for the growing number of immigrants being held at private facilities. Biden had promised to end the private, for-profit jails but has exempted the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency from this effort and the number of immigrants in detention has nearly doubled to 29,000 since he took office.“Frankly, it’s infuriating,” Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for Detention Watch Network, told the Washington Post. “It’s incredibly disappointing. We really expected more.”TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden to reinstate Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ migrant policy

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      US immigrationBiden to reinstate Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ migrant policyDoJ says reinstatement depends on approval from MexicoCourt overturned Biden’s initial decision to suspend policy Amanda Holpuch@holpuchFri 15 Oct 2021 14.57 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 15.55 EDTThe Biden administration said on Friday it plans to reinstate the Trump-era border policy known as Remain in Mexico, which forced at least 70,000 asylum seekers to stay in Mexico, many for extended periods and in deprived and dangerous conditions, while they waited for their cases to be considered US courts.Senior state department official calls Biden’s deportation of Haitians illegalRead moreJoe Biden suspended the policy formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in his first days in office, but a federal judge ordered his administration to put it back into place.In a court filing late on Friday, the US justice department said the program’s reinstatement depended on approval from the Mexican government, which is asking for the asylum cases to be settled in six months and for the US to ensure the people affected have timely and accurate information as well as better access to legal counsel. The program is expected to be back in effect in mid-November.Donald Trump introduced Remain in Mexico in January 2019. From the beginning, advocates criticized the program because it put highly vulnerable migrants, mostly from Central and South America, at serious risk of physical harm and illness as they waited in some of the most dangerous cities in the world. It also fails to address the forces pushing people north to the US-Mexico border and the huge backlogs in US immigration courts.Campaign group Human Rights Watch said in a January report about the policy that affected asylum seekers it interviewed, including children, “described rape or attempted rape and other sexual assault, abduction for ransom, extortion, armed robbery, and other crimes committed against them”.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immigrants’ rights policy director, Omar Jadwat, said via Twitter that the news was “appalling” and acknowledged the Biden administration was required by a court order to make a “good faith” effort to restart it.“They had a lot of options here, including re-terminating MPP promptly and seeking to vacate the order,” Jadwat said.To restart the program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to spend $14.1m to reopen temporary courtrooms located in tents in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, which will cost $10.5m a month to operate, according to a court filing.In June, the DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, formally put an end to the policy and in a memo said: “MPP had mixed effectiveness in achieving several of its central goals and that the program experienced significant challenges.”TopicsUS immigrationMexicoAmericasTrump administrationUS politicsBiden administrationUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More