Tag: Migration

December 9, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • The Trump administration is proposing a far-reaching overhaul of the asylum system that would make it harder for applicants to win humanitarian protection in the U.S. and would allow the government to quickly deport many more asylum seekers at the border. The proposal, made public Wednesday by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, would mean most asylum applicants are no longer entitled to a full court proceeding to hear their claims, as they are now.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, U.S. Policy

December 9, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • The number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border has nearly doubled in recent weeks, and smugglers are using riskier tactics to get them across, a top U.S. Border Patrol official says. Agents are apprehending an average of 153 young migrants a day at the border since October, up from about 80 a day earlier this year, Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz, Border Patrol’s second in command, said in an interview with USA TODAY.

Tags: Border and Migration Politics, Migration, U.S. Policy

December 3, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • An El Paso immigrant detention facility has the largest current detainee COVID-19 outbreak of any Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in the United States. As of Nov. 30, 44 detainees at El Paso Service Processing Center have COVID-19, according to ICE’s website. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 301 detainees in El Paso have tested positive for the virus. The next largest outbreak is 35 at a detention facility in Pearsall, Texas.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, Public Health, U.S. Policy

December 2, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • Legal advocates tasked by a federal judge with helping to find migrant families separated at the U.S. border in 2017 and 2018 say that after months of pleas, the government last week handed over new data that could be critical to helping them find the families.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, U.S. Policy

December 1, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • Human smugglers are exploiting the enforcement policies that President Donald Trump’s administration set in motion along the U.S.-Mexico border, including large-scale restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19 and the ongoing construction of physical barriers. Those U.S. policies — coupled with the precarious living situations for thousands of migrants that the pandemic has exacerbated in Mexico — are creating ripe conditions for smugglers. The result is a dramatic rise in human smuggling activity across southern Arizona over the past year, according to multiple federal and local law enforcement agencies in the state.

Tags: Border and Migration Politics, Migration, Public Health, U.S. Policy

November 26, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have shut down the South Texas warehouse where chain-link enclosures were deplored as “cages” during the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrant families and children. The facility will undergo renovations until 2022, CBP officials said.

Tags: Border and Migration Politics, Migration, U.S. Policy

November 19, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • Border Patrol agents are already seeing a Biden surge in illegal immigration at the southwest border, officials said, with the numbers surging 21% over the last month alone. Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said worsening economic conditions south of the border are largely responsible for the uptick, but he also blamed “perceived and or anticipated shifts in policies” here in the U.S.

Tags: Border and Migration Politics, Migration, U.S. Policy

November 19, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • U.S. authorities made more than 69,000 arrests and detentions last month along the border with Mexico, a 21 percent increase from September and the highest total for any October since 2005, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures released today. The increase was partly fueled by a soaring number of repeat arrests along the border resulting from the Trump administration’s practice of quickly “expelling” people to Mexico after they enter the country illegally.

Tags: Border and Migration Politics, Migration, U.S. Policy

November 19, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • The Trump White House blocked the Justice Department from making a deal in October 2019 to pay for mental health services for migrant families who had been separated by the Trump administration, two current and two former senior administration officials told NBC News. 

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, U.S. Policy

November 18, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its practice of “expelling” underage migrants who enter the United States without a parent, a ruling that also cast doubt on the broader legality of the emergency public health measures the U.S. government has used since March to impose strict border controls. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s preliminary injunction requires the Trump administration to once more process the humanitarian claims of minors who cross the U.S. border alone, rather than returning them to Mexico or flying them back to their home countries without due process.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, Public Health, U.S. Policy

November 18, 2020

December 16, 2020
  • A federal judge blocked President Trump’s policy of turning away migrant children at the border as public health risks, ruling that the expulsion of thousands of children without due process exceeded the authority that public health emergency decrees confer. 

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, Public Health, U.S. Policy

November 10, 2020

November 19, 2020
  • Lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by the Trump administration before and during its “zero tolerance” policy at the border now believe the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents is 666, higher than they told a federal judge last month, according to an email obtained by NBC News. Nearly 20 percent, or 129, of those children were under 5 at the time of the separation, according to a source familiar with the data.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, U.S. Policy

November 2, 2020

November 19, 2020
  • Since the introduction of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) – also known as “Remain in Mexico” – in 2019, asylum seekers seeking to enter the US via the US-Mexico border must wait in Mexico for the duration of their US immigration court proceedings. As a result of this policy, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers found themselves sleeping on the streets near the border. Gradually, a camp of approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people began to form on the banks of the River Grande that separates the northern Mexican town of Matamoros from the Texan town of Brownsville.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, U.S. Policy

October 30, 2020

November 19, 2020
  • Authorities in the United States who turned away asylum-seekers at official border crossings told immigrants they didn’t have space to process them, regardless of whether they actually could, according to an unpublished inspector general’s report obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Tags: Border and Migration Politics, Human Rights, Migration, U.S. Policy

October 30, 2020

November 19, 2020
  • An immigration detention center in south Texas has been converted into a staging ground to hold migrant families with children who the Trump administration seeks to expel from the U.S. without a court hearing, asylum interview or consultation with lawyers.

Tags: Human Rights, Migration, Public Health, U.S. Policy