Published in NPR, Barbara Sprunt and Claudia Grisales – February 18, 2021. Congressional Democrats unveiled a sweeping immigration bill Thursday that includes setting up a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
Originally Published in Time
Jasmine Aguilera – December 4, 2020
A federal judge is now requiring the government to provide an explanation as to why data on missing separated parents was not disclosed at an earlier date.
The data includes phone numbers and addresses that could help locate some of the more than 600 parents who have still not been found after they were separated from their children at the southern U.S. Border between 2017 and 2018. The data could help with efforts to reunite the parents with their children.
At a Friday status hearing, Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California asked lawyers representing the government to provide an official declaration to explain what kept officials from providing the information earlier.
The fact that they’ve been sitting on these phone numbers has really been outrageous, said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney representing the separated children, at the Friday hearing. We strongly urge the government to continue searching for more information…they know their data better.
The government shared the previously undisclosed data with a steering committee charged with locating the parents on Nov. 25, according to court documents.
The new data comes from the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), containing phone numbers and other information that was not previously shared with lawyers and nonprofit organizations who make up the steering committee appointed by the judge to locate the families who were separated as part of the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance policy.
Because the information was provided on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Committee has not yet had time to determine the full scope or usefulness of this new information, reads a joint status report filed in court on Wednesday.
The parents of 628 children have not yet been located by the steering committee, the status report says. (A previous court filing from October reported 545 children’s parents had yet to be located, but on Nov. 9, NBC News obtained an email containing information that the number increased to 666).
Of those 628, parents of 333 are believed to have been deported, and the parents of approximately 295 children are believed to be in the U.S. The steering committee adds that though the parents have not yet been located, another family member has been reached for 168 of the 628 children. An initial court document filed on Wednesday stated 295 parents were believed to have been deported, and approximately 333 were believed to be in the U.S., but lawyers representing the children clarified during the Friday court hearing that the numbers were an error, and should actually be reversed. This article has been updated to reflect the correction.
Lawyers representing the government said officials were not intentionally withholding information, but that because EOIR is not involved in the investigation and search for the missing parents. According to the government’s lawyers, it took a brainstorm by government officials before realizing data kept by EOIR could be useful.
We are hopeful that [the data] will be helpful going forward, said Sarah Fabian, a lawyer for the government. We don’t believe that this was a neglectful or a nefarious attempt.
Several organizations involved in the search for parents of the separated children have criticized the government for not sharing the information sooner.
The Trump Admin purposely withheld vital information delaying the process of reuniting children separated from their parents. It’s cruel & a violation of human rights that our gov’t unduly prolonged these children’s pain & suffering, shared Kids In Need of Defense (KIND), an organization which provides legal representation and support for the children who remain in the U.S., in a Thursday tweet.
Justice in Motion, which works with volunteers in Central America to help locate the parents who are believed to have been deported there, called for President-Elect Joe Biden to return the deported parents to the U.S. and grant the families a legal status in a Wednesday Tweet.
Biden has promised to dedicate a task force on day one of his Administration to help locate the remaining parents and reunite them with their children.
Originally Published in The New York Times
Nolan Kanno-Youngs – December 4, 2020
HOUSTON – The cars began filing into the parking lot shortly after 6 a.m., snaking around police officers who directed traffic to masked volunteers standing ready with boxes of frozen pizza, tortillas and brown bags of canned food.
The coronavirus pandemic pushed many of the hundreds of families to the drive-through food pantry, but among the several immigrant families in line, another cause was at work: President Trump’s newly expanded regulation that blocks access to green cards for legal immigrants who are deemed likely to accept any government assistance. Even with citizen children who clearly qualify for federal assistance, undocumented immigrant parents are eschewing programs like food stamps and are flocking to food pantries.
That, in turn, is badly straining relief agencies and presenting a challenge to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who could confront rising hunger by expanding government programs but will not be able to quickly undo the Trump administration’s expansion of a Clinton-era regulation that is pushing immigrant families away from those programs.
They stop enrolling their kids and asking for food, said Cathy Moore, the executive director of Epiphany Community Health Outreach Services, which runs the drive-through food pantry in Houston. They’re scared.
Dani, a 34-year-old undocumented immigrant from Honduras and the mother of three daughters, said she was alarmed early in the Trump administration when the president described immigrants as criminals and called for deportation raids. But she changed her behavior and dropped off food stamps and Medicaid in 2018 when the administration announced its so-called public charge rule, expanding the authority of officials to deny green cards to immigrants who might need public assistance.
On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Trump administration when it upheld preliminary injunctions against the public charge rule, deciding that the regulation was most likely not a reasonable interpretation of federal immigration law. But even as the policy continues to be litigated, it has already spread fear and confusion throughout immigrant communities.
The Clinton administration instructed officials to deem immigrants a public charge in limited circumstances, like if they were receiving government cash benefits. But the Trump administration effectively created a wealth test for immigrants seeking permanent residency by rendering inadmissible applicants deemed likely to use a broad range of safety net programs.
Some undocumented immigrants who have resided in the country for many years fear that using public benefits for their families could undermine their chances of securing permanent residency if a new Congress ever provided amnesty. If denied a green card, they believe that they would then become vulnerable to deportation.
Unauthorized immigrants are already ineligible for most welfare programs, but multiple researchers have said the policy has prompted thousands of families to drop off the benefit rolls, even if their American-citizen children could use such programs with no effect on their immigration applications – families like Dani’s.
I remember all that about the public charge and everything, and I cannot sleep, said Dani, who was especially concerned about her efforts to obtain a green card so she could stay with her children. What’s going to happen if I’m deported? What happens if I’m sent away?
While some of Mr. Trump’s executive actions can be rolled back quickly by the incoming Biden administration, the public charge regulation, which went through the laborious regulatory process before it was enacted, will prove arduous to rescind if it is ultimately upheld by the courts. And reducing the distrust in the government it has caused will be a major challenge for Mr. Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the first Latino and immigrant chosen for that role.
The department, which handles immigration matters like the issuance of green cards, has purview over the public charge rule.
The fear has risen to such a pitch that it will be a real challenge to assuage families’ fears. They are focused on public charge, but not solely public charge, said Cheasty Anderson, the director of immigration policy and advocacy at the Children’s Defense Fund-Texas. There isn’t going to be trust in the federal government among immigrant communities who are currently afraid and intimidated until they stop feeling attacked by the federal government apparatus.
T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for Mr. Biden, reiterated that the president-elect would work to roll back the public charge rule and was committed to engaging with communities from Day 1 to ensure that they are able to access the care that is available to keep their families safe and healthy.
A survey of 949 members of immigrant households conducted by the Urban Institute found that more than 20 percent of immigrant adults avoided public benefits like food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program out of fear of risking future green cards in 2019. Researchers for Ideas42, a nonprofit research organization, estimated that 260,000 children nationwide were removed by their parents from nutrition and health care programs after the announcement of the rule.
The Trump administration said the rule was necessary to ensure that immigrants who come to the United States were self-sufficient and not a drain on taxpayer resources. After announcing the policy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a top homeland security official, revised the iconic sonnet on the Statue of Liberty by saying the United States would welcome those who can stand on their own two feet.
The administration had also predicted the chilling effect. In the final rule, Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting homeland security secretary at the time, wrote that the policy might cause foreigners and American citizens in households with unauthorized immigrants who may otherwise be eligible for public benefits to drop out of the programs. The agency estimated that could save the federal government nearly $2.5 billion annually.
The effects have been acute among immigrant families in Texas, according to a report released in November by the Children’s Defense Fund, which compiled data from 32 social services organizations around the border state. Ms. Moore’s organization reported a 37 percent decline in food-stamp enrollment from 2016 to 2019 among a clientele base made up of more than 80 percent immigrant families, even while demand at the organization’s food distribution site shot up 327 percent.
Another organization, VELA, a nonprofit that assists families of disabled children with a membership that is 85 percent immigrant, reported an 80 percent drop in food stamp enrollment from 2017 to 2019.
One of those who dropped off was Guillermina, a mother of three in Austin, Texas, who like other parents interviewed for this article declined to use her full name for fear of retaliation from the government. After hearing about the public charge rule, Guillermina withdrew from food stamps in 2018 and let her health insurance expire.
Anything but the essentials suddenly became a luxury.
The biggest limitation for us was meat and protein. That was the most expensive thing, Guillermina said. The big thing was being able to know how to ration that item so we could include it in small bits throughout the week.
The lack of health insurance meant she could no longer send her 4-year-old son to speech therapy. Without therapy sessions, Guillermina’s 11-year-old daughter, who has autism, began to forget techniques she had learned for household tasks, resulting in bursts of anger.
The thing with public charge is it’s something that didn’t just affect me, Guillermina said. It affected all my family members, so many families I know in the process of fixing their papers – this fear of feeling like I never could access my benefits without the risk of deportation.
In McAllen, Texas, Nailea Avalos, a 32-year-old mother of three who has worked for years as a waitress, took a deep breath and began to cry at the mention of the public charge rule. Originally from Mexico, she used public benefits to supplement her income as a waitress and her husband’s earnings from construction until 2016, when a friend told her Mr. Trump could soon punish those who used assistance.
She grew used to rationing food.
But in 2018, her daughter Xiomara, 8 at the time, showed how much she needed Medicaid. When an asthma attack impeded Xiomara’s breathing for a week, Ms. Avalos said she used a nebulizer she still had from an earlier illness of her son’s rather than taking her daughter to a hospital. When Xiomara’s struggles continued, she took her across the border to Reynosa, Mexico, for medical treatment.
I felt like I wasn’t a good mother, that I wasn’t taking care of my child, Ms. Avalos said.
When her husband lost his job in construction during the pandemic, she was driven back to public benefits. She has been told that using government assistance for her citizen children will not affect her green card eligibility, but she said she was still filled with anxiety.
We’re leaving it to God, but we’re also hoping if we have a new administration and a new president, that all that changes, Ms. Avalos said, adding that she hoped Biden administration officials just have a conscience.
Some of the parents using the food pantry in Houston said they re-enrolled in the public benefits programs only because they lost their jobs in the pandemic. But parents like Dani said they still felt more comfortable waiting for hours with their children in line at the drive-through food pantry.
They should have the food stamps that they’re eligible for because these people need to be able to put food on the table for their children that are United States citizens, said Ms. Moore, of Epiphany Community Health Outreach Services. The collateral damage is to the children.
As a case manager approached driver-side windows to speak to the parents, the line of vehicles threatened to extend beyond the parking lot. Police officers would need to tell more drivers to come back another time.
It’s not jarring anymore, Ms. Moore said. It’s just the norm.
Originally Published in CNN
Priscilla Alvarez – December 4, 2020
(CNN) More than 1,000 migrant children in US government custody have tested positive for coronavirus since March, according to the federal agency charged with their care.
Originally Published in The New York Times
Cecilia Kang and Mike Isaac – December 3, 2020
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department sued Facebook on Thursday, accusing it of being un-American by favoring foreign workers with visas over those from the United States, in a new push against tech companies in the waning days of the Trump administration.
In the complaint, the department’s civil rights division said Facebook refused to recruit, consider or hire qualified and available U.S. workers for more than 2,600 positions, with an average salary of $156,000. Those jobs instead went to immigrant visa holders, according to the complaint.
The action followed a two-year investigation into whether Facebook intentionally favored so-called H1-B visa and other temporary immigrant workers over U.S. workers, the Justice Department said.
Our message to workers is clear: If companies deny employment opportunities by illegally preferring temporary visa holders, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable, said Eric S. Dreiband, the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division. Our message to all employers – including those in the technology sector – is clear: You cannot illegally prefer to recruit, consider or hire temporary visa holders over U.S. workers.
Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, said, Facebook has been cooperating with the D.O.J. in its review of this issue, and while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on pending litigation.
Bipartisan anger in Washington has mounted in recent years against Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple – some of the world’s most valuable companies – for data privacy abuses, the spread of disinformation and other toxic content on their platforms, and complaints of anticompetitive practices that have harmed consumers and small businesses.
For months, regulators and lawmakers have homed in on Facebook for possible monopoly violations. The Federal Trade Commissionand dozens of states are preparing antitrust lawsuits against the social network for maintaining its power through mergers of nascent competitors, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. They are expected to announce plans for legal action soon, people briefed on the cases have said.
The discrimination suit, which goes before an administrative law judge, opens a different front in Washington’s battle against Big Tech. Although President Trump has jabbed at the companies as recently as this week, when he threatened to revoke speech liability protections for internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter, it is the first time the administration has brought legal action claiming immigrant employment bias.
Skilled-worker visas in the technology industry have been a focus of debate for a decade. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM and other companies have lobbied for years to expand H1-B visas, arguing the importance of getting the best engineers from overseas, particularly from China and India. Critics have called the visa program a crutch for tech companies to overlook U.S.-born talent and lure foreign workers at lower wages.
Mr. Trump has been a vocal critic of temporary worker visas. In October, his administration announced new rules for the H1-B program, substantially raising the wages that U.S. companies must pay foreign hires and narrowing eligibility criteria for applicants.
The Justice Department has rarely sued tech companies on the issue, though other agencies have accused the firms of racial or gender bias. In 2016, the Labor Department sued the data firm Palantir, alleging bias against Asians. The Labor Department separately sued Google to reveal data on hiring based on gender, race, religion and sexual orientation.
According to its complaint, the Justice Department found that between Jan. 1 and Sept. 18 last year, Facebook routinely put H1-B and other immigrant temporary workers on a track for permanent employment that was not available to U.S. citizens. Facebook also used less effective methods to advertise jobs to U.S. workers, including declining to promote the positions on Facebook.com/careers, the department said.
The hiring spotlighted by the complaint made up just 0.5 percent of Facebook’s 50,000 employees. But the Justice Department said Facebook had violated federal labor laws that require employers to make permanent employment opportunities as easily available to U.S. workers as they are to foreign visa holders.
Facebook’s discriminatory recruitment and hiring practice is routine, ongoing and widespread, the complaint said.
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, has for years made fighting for immigrants’ rights to work in the U.S. tech industry a pet issue. In 2013, he and several friends created Fwd.us, a nonprofit group that pushed for an overhaul of immigration laws and stumped for easing the immigration process for tech workers.
The issue has been a source of friction between Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Trump. In 2015, leaders at Fwd.us chafed at Mr. Trump’s immigration proposals, which would have restricted H-1B visas for skilled, foreign-born employees. They claimed that the plan would radically restrict paths to the United States for immigrant tech workers.
When Mr. Trump signed an executive order in 2017 limiting immigration from majority-Muslim countries, Mr. Zuckerberg spoke out against it.
We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat, he said in a post to his Facebook page. We should also keep our doors open to refugees and those who need help. That’s who we are.
Kim Clarke, a lawyer at Varnum who advises employers on immigration and labor issues, said the Justice Department suit could have a chilling effect on tech hiring.
In the long run, if broader tech companies can’t hire the skilled talent on which they rely, their competitive positions will be hindered, Ms. Clarke said. The trickle-down effect of this action could impact even smaller employers that hire only a handful of foreign workers.
Cecilia Kang reported from Washington, and Mike Isaac from San Francisco.
Originally Published in Politico
Tucker Doherty – December 3, 2020
Thousands of foreign doctors and nurses could surge into areas overwhelmed by the coronavirus early in the Biden administration if health industry interests and advocacy groups win changes to immigration policy and reverse President Donald Trump’s crackdown on certain visas.
An estimated 10,000 physicians are in the country on H-1B visas that currently restrict where they can work – and they could face deportation if they fall ill and are unable to do their jobs. An additional 15,000 foreign nurses who’ve applied to immigrate are stuck in limbo because of consulate closures and backlogs. The Trump administration has tightened visa requirements on these and other skilled foreign workers, adding to the difficulties.
Hospital operators, medical associations and immigration groups want the incoming administration to issue executive orders and other directives after Inauguration Day to ease visa restrictions, and also are lobbying Congress on stalled legislation that would grant more foreign doctors and nurses permanent residency status – possibly by reallocating 40,000 green card slots that have gone unused in recent years.
We’ve got open beds, we’ve got ventilators, we’ve got all the physical aspects. Our issue has been more along the lines of having staff, said Tim Moore, CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association. Powerful industry groups including the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association have joined in the calls for change.
The Trump administration largely rebuffed the groups’ repeated requests on health workers, though the federal health department made some accommodations, like giving doctors on visas expanded use of telemedicine. There is still a remote chance further changes could be wrapped into a pandemic relief package before the end of the year.
On Tuesday, a federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s latest effort to limit high-skilled immigration. But advocates say plenty of barriers remain.
Concerns about having enough doctors and nurses to handle surging Covid caseloads have intensified over the past month, with some major hospitals again shutting down all elective procedures to free up staff. Unlike in the spring, the prevalence of the virus means there are fewer U.S. health care workers traveling to hot spots.
Much of the recent lobbying around surging foreign health workers has revolved around the Healthcare Workforce Resiliency Act, S. 3599 (116), a bill that would recapture thousands of unused green cards Congress authorized in previous years and reallocate them, with 25,000 reserved for nurses and 15,000 for physicians.
But despite broad support from both sides of the aisle – including lead sponsor Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), whose runoff election in December could determine control of the Senate – the bill has been stalled since May.
Advocates of expanded immigration and health interests expect the measure will have stronger support from the Biden White House.
I think it has a chance of passing even if Republicans keep control of the Senate, without Trump pushing on this issue, said Greg Siskind, a prominent immigration lawyer who specializes in health care employment. I don’t think it’s a natural thing for Republicans to be anti-immigration. They’ve always been willing to reach bipartisan solutions, it’s only been the last four years that’s changed.
But skeptics give it long odds in a narrowly divided Congress that’s been reluctant to rewrite immigration laws. It’s hard to get anything passed in Congress, said Chris Musillo, an employment immigration lawyer who specializes in cases involving nurses. Is the president a part of that? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t lay all the blame at his feet.
Many of the bill’s green cards would go to physicians currently on H-1B visas already practicing in the U.S., giving them permanent resident status. Under the terms of their current visas, these physicians effectively cannot volunteer at other facilities due to work-site restrictions and face the possibility ofdeportation if they get sick and are unable to continue performing their job duties.
We literally hold our breath whenever there is slight news that there might be another Covid relief bill, said a physician working in Wisconsin on an H1-B visa, who responded to a POLITICO call out and requested anonymity to speak candidly. But everybody would agree that it’s more likely to happen with a Biden administration.
Even though I want to help out, because of the visa hurdles and restrictions I’m not able to, said another physician in Kansas with an H-1B visa, who likewise requested anonymity. It’s frustrating because we’re willing to help wherever there is a shortage but our hands are tied.
Other green cards would go to foreign workers overseas – mostly nurses, the most in-demand position at hospitals facing shortages – who are hoping to emigrate to the United States.
Even if the bill does not pass, advocates say the Biden administration could take action to help thousands of foreign-trained nurses who are stuck overseas.
Originally Published in the Daily Beast
Scott Bixby – December 3, 2020
In the closing days of the presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to make reuniting the hundreds of migrant children forcibly separated from their families under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy a top priority of his new administration.
But those who have dedicated much of the past two years to reuniting those children with their loved ones say that the continued challenges posed by President Donald Trump’s family separation policy are far more complicated than merely matching parents and children—and can only be truly addressed by the president-elect backing reforms that would allow parents who were deported without their kids to reunite on American soil.
But since Biden’s pledge in the final days of the campaign to form a federal task force to reunite those children with their parents, the makeup of that task force, the resources allotted to it, and its specific plan of action has remained a relative mystery. The Biden transition has kept the planning for the task force, the members of which have not yet been announced, under wraps, and allies in the nonprofit sphere say they’re not sure that the scope of the task force will be enough to fix the damage of one of Trump’s most despised immigration policies.
“While we welcome any help a Biden administration can give us in locating the remaining families, that’s not what we believe their focus should be,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We will ultimately find these families, but only the administration can allow the families to return to the United States, and provide them legal status.”
“You should be putting in place policies and procedures to help parents return quickly and safely to the United States, so that they can reunify with their children,” Jennifer Podkul, the vice president of policy and advocacy for nonprofit Kids in Need of Defense, told reporters on a phone briefing last month. “They should make immediate immigration reprieve options available for separated families to ensure there’s stability and prevent deportation and work with Congress to create a pathway to permanent lawful status for separated parents and children.”
Until now, many family reunifications have entailed returning children to their countries of origin to be with family members who were previously deported, a wrenching decision that can mean forcing a parent to choose between seeing their child again or allowing their child to make their case for asylum in the United States.
“I can’t even imagine what that would be like to be separated from your family member, but the reunification in home-country, particularly when a lot of folks coming were seeking asylum… it really doesn’t make sense,” said Leah Chavla, senior policy adviser in the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “It feels insufficient or unsatisfactory, right? They were, in some cases, deprived of the right to due process for their claims and they may potentially be still in hiding.”
In conversations with half a dozen immigration attorneys, advocates for migrant rights, and experts on children in the asylum system, top authorities in the field told The Daily Beast that despite waning public interest after the reversal of a policy that the Trump administration once claimed never existed, the family separation crisis has remained extremely dire.
“It’s been very difficult, I feel like the deck has been stacked against us in many ways, but we have been continuing really ardent efforts, zealous efforts to try to find these families,” said Chavla. “We’re talking about families that could have been separated as far back as July 1st 2017, so it’s quite some time. Any information that the government did have on these parents and these families… a lot of it is outdated or spotty to begin with, and now with the passage of time obviously that just makes things a little more complicated.”
According to the most recent court filing submitted by the attorneys tasked with locating migrant parents who were separated from their children by the Trump administration, they are still attempting to locate the parents of 666 children. But that number only tells part of the story of the challenges of family reunification.
“A lot of people think that those are the only families that are separated, but the number of families that are separated with the parents in Central America is much larger than that,” Chelernt said. “We have found hundreds of parents. But even though we’ve found them, the Trump administration won’t let the parents come back.”
During the presidential campaign, Biden pointed to the family separation policy—wherein thousands of migrant minors at the U.S. border were forcibly separated from their asylum-seeking parents and families, held in medically and psychologically dangerous conditions at detention facilities scattered across the country, and in an estimated 666 cases were never reunited with their loved ones—as perhaps the most heinous example of Trump’s immigration policies, and one of the most shameful chapters in American immigration history.
“Let’s talk about what happened,” Biden said during his final debate with Trump. “Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated, and now they cannot find over 500 of the sets of those parents, and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal. It’s criminal.”
One week later, Biden’s campaign pledged in an advertisement that aired four days before the election to that “on his first day as president, Joe Biden will issue an executive order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents,” after media reports found that there were still hundreds of kids separated from their families.
Close allies on Capitol Hill have already begun pushing legislation that would go much further than simply reuniting the children with their parents abroad. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) intend to re-introduce legislation, first proposed in 2019, that would provide the victims family separation policy with legal immigration status and a path to citizenship.
Although the bill, titled the “Families Belong Together Act,” is authored by two staunch allies of the nascent Biden administration and even shares its name with a common refrain from the former vice president’s campaign remarks on immigration, it’s unclear whether the president-elect supports the legislation. The Biden transition did not respond to requests for comment about the bill, or about the makeup of the as-yet unnamed task force.
Still, some of those organizations have already laid out their plans for enacting proper family reunification, and indicated that all the transition needs to do for their help is to ask.
“We don’t want them to think all they need to do is help us find the families and that’s the extent of the help we want. Ultimately, we can find the families on our own,” said the ACLU’s Gelernt. “The main thing is we need them to do what only they can do, which is allow parents to come back to the U.S. and then give them legal status here.”
Originally Published in the Daily Beast
Scott Bixby – December 3, 2020
In the closing days of the presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to make reuniting the hundreds of migrant children forcibly separated from their families under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy a top priority of his new administration.
But those who have dedicated much of the past two years to reuniting those children with their loved ones say that the continued challenges posed by President Donald Trump’s family separation policy are far more complicated than merely matching parents and children-and can only be truly addressed by the president-elect backing reforms that would allow parents who were deported without their kids to reunite on American soil.
But since Biden’s pledge in the final days of the campaign to form a federal task force to reunite those children with their parents, the makeup of that task force, the resources allotted to it, and its specific plan of action has remained a relative mystery. The Biden transition has kept the planning for the task force, the members of which have not yet been announced, under wraps, and allies in the nonprofit sphere say they’re not sure that the scope of the task force will be enough to fix the damage of one of Trump’s most despised immigration policies.
While we welcome any help a Biden administration can give us in locating the remaining families, that’s not what we believe their focus should be, said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. We will ultimately find these families, but only the administration can allow the families to return to the United States, and provide them legal status.
You should be putting in place policies and procedures to help parents return quickly and safely to the United States, so that they can reunify with their children, Jennifer Podkul, the vice president of policy and advocacy for nonprofit Kids in Need of Defense, told reporters on a phone briefing last month. They should make immediate immigration reprieve options available for separated families to ensure there’s stability and prevent deportation and work with Congress to create a pathway to permanent lawful status for separated parents and children.
Until now, many family reunifications have entailed returning children to their countries of origin to be with family members who were previously deported, a wrenching decision that can mean forcing a parent to choose between seeing their child again or allowing their child to make their case for asylum in the United States.
I can’t even imagine what that would be like to be separated from your family member, but the reunification in home-country, particularly when a lot of folks coming were seeking asylum… it really doesn’t make sense, said Leah Chavla, senior policy adviser in the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. It feels insufficient or unsatisfactory, right? They were, in some cases, deprived of the right to due process for their claims and they may potentially be still in hiding.
In conversations with half a dozen immigration attorneys, advocates for migrant rights, and experts on children in the asylum system, top authorities in the field told The Daily Beast that despite waning public interest after the reversal of a policy that the Trump administration once claimed never existed, the family separation crisis has remained extremely dire.
It’s been very difficult, I feel like the deck has been stacked against us in many ways, but we have been continuing really ardent efforts, zealous efforts to try to find these families, said Chavla. We’re talking about families that could have been separated as far back as July 1st 2017, so it’s quite some time. Any information that the government did have on these parents and these families… a lot of it is outdated or spotty to begin with, and now with the passage of time obviously that just makes things a little more complicated.
According to the most recent court filing submitted by the attorneys tasked with locating migrant parents who were separated from their children by the Trump administration, they are still attempting to locate the parents of 666 children. But that number only tells part of the story of the challenges of family reunification.
A lot of people think that those are the only families that are separated, but the number of families that are separated with the parents in Central America is much larger than that, Chelernt said. We have found hundreds of parents. But even though we’ve found them, the Trump administration won’t let the parents come back.
During the presidential campaign, Biden pointed to the family separation policy-wherein thousands of migrant minors at the U.S. border were forcibly separated from their asylum-seeking parents and families, held in medically and psychologically dangerous conditions at detention facilities scattered across the country, and in an estimated 666 cases were never reunited with their loved ones-as perhaps the most heinous example of Trump’s immigration policies, and one of the most shameful chapters in American immigration history.
Let’s talk about what happened, Biden said during his final debate with Trump. Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated, and now they cannot find over 500 of the sets of those parents, and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal. It’s criminal.
One week later, Biden’s campaign pledged in an advertisement that aired four days before the election to that on his first day as president, Joe Biden will issue an executive order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents, after media reports found that there were still hundreds of kids separated from their families.
Close allies on Capitol Hill have already begun pushing legislation that would go much further than simply reuniting the children with their parents abroad. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) intend to re-introduce legislation, first proposed in 2019, that would provide the victims family separation policy with legal immigration status and a path to citizenship.
Although the bill, titled the Families Belong Together Act, is authored by two staunch allies of the nascent Biden administration and even shares its name with a common refrain from the former vice president’s campaign remarks on immigration, it’s unclear whether the president-elect supports the legislation. The Biden transition did not respond to requests for comment about the bill, or about the makeup of the as-yet unnamed task force.
Still, some of those organizations have already laid out their plans for enacting proper family reunification, and indicated that all the transition needs to do for their help is to ask.
We don’t want them to think all they need to do is help us find the families and that’s the extent of the help we want. Ultimately, we can find the families on our own, said the ACLU’s Gelernt. The main thing is we need them to do what only they can do, which is allow parents to come back to the U.S. and then give them legal status here.
Originally Published in The Intercept
Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven – December 3, 2020
Three months earlier, as The Intercept previously reported, Golding, who has asthma, was a lead organizer of a protest inside the jail pushing for stronger measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Now, as he looked around, he realized that the detainees’ worst fears had come true.
Cleaning supplies provided to detainees. Photo: Obtained by The Intercept
Etowah, which contracts with the federal government to hold people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stated in court documents that it was taking precautions recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including quarantining new arrivals, implementing social distancing measures, and providing cleaning supplies. But Golding and more than a dozen other ICE detainees say the measures taken were inadequate and led to a massive Covid-19 outbreak.
Seven of the men say they were given only one disposable mask every three weeks. One shared a photo of what he said were the only cleaning supplies he’d received: a toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, and combination shampoo/body wash, which came inside a gift bag from the Salvation Army emblazoned with the words Merry Christmas.
Immigrants inside Etowah also said that many new arrivals were quarantined for five or eight days rather than the recommended two-week period, potentially allowing the virus to spread. According to a partial Etowah roster obtained by The Intercept and In These Times, ICE transferred at least 24 people into the facility in June. By the second half of July, the agency reported that 21 detainees – nearly a quarter of those housed in Etowah’s ICE unit – were sick.
Karim Golding, photographed before his incarceration 13 years ago. Photo: Courtesy of Karim Golding
When Golding came out of his cell and saw the condition of those around him, the organizer part of his brain clicked back on. I’m looking at people that’s literally looking pale in the face, he said. And medical is doing nothing for them. Golding decided to tell everyone in the unit to request a test for Covid-19.
So you have Africans, you have Jamaicans, you have El Salvadorans – you have different groups, Golding explained. What I did was say, ‘Hey, listen, you talk to your peoples, you tell them this.’
Many people were apprehensive about asking for a test, as guards had already put the few who were presumed positive into solitary confinement, a fate the United Nations says amounts to torture. In solitary, detainees said they were locked in cells without air conditioning for around 23 hours a day. The average high temperature in July in Gadsden is 91 degrees.
Nevertheless, by July 4, everyone in the unit – more than 80 people – had put in requests to be tested, according to interviews with Golding and another detainee, as well as the affidavits of nine detainees included in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus Golding filed on his own behalf in the Northern District of Alabama in September.
Two days later, according to the 11 detainees, Etowah County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Mike O’Bryant called a lockdown of the unit and read out the names of 10 detainees who’d been especially vocal in calling for mass testing, including Golding. O’Bryant told them to pack their bags because they were being sent to solitary confinement. At the time of their transfer, none had tested positive for Covid-19. All 11 sources said they felt this was punishment and retaliation for requesting the coronavirus tests.
I noticed that all of us who were randomly picked were the ones who were vocal, outspoken, and shown desire to be tested, Stanley Walden wrote in an affidavit dated August 7.
He hand-picked cells and made an example in front of everyone that he really meant to throw anyone who get tested into a dungeon, Sebastian Abalo Cunna wrote in an affidavit dated July 28. It feels like punishment for standing up for our right to health and safety.
After locking down the unit, the captain and other staff members went cell to cell asking the remaining detainees if they still wanted to be tested for Covid-19, according to Golding and the affidavits of nine others. Most detainees revoked their requests and agreed to sign waivers saying they no longer wanted to be tested.
In a recorded conversation involving two Etowah employees obtained by The Intercept and In These Times, one employee described the events of July 6 as an attempt to bully people into not getting tested. Afterward, both employees said in the recording, immigrants inside Etowah appeared too scared to seek even basic medical care.
Four of those who were sent to solitary confinement said they were unable to communicate with their families for days, leading some concerned family members to call the facility. The relatives of one detainee said jail staff assured them that their family member was fine; at the time, he was in solitary confinement having developed symptoms of Covid-19. Golding’s mother said she was told there was no evidence of the virus at the facility, even as ICE listed at least one coronavirus case at Etowah on its website. According to the family members interviewed for this story, neither ICE nor Etowah ever reached out to tell them their loved ones were sick.
The Etowah County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to detailed questions from The Intercept and In These Times about the jail’s Covid-19 precautions, the detainees’ allegations of retaliation, and whether detainees had authorized the release of their medical information to family members.
The health, safety, and welfare of those in our care remain a top priority and concern for the agency, a spokesperson for ICE wrote in an emailed statement. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, ICE has taken extensive steps to safeguard all detainees, staff and contractors, including: reducing the number of detainees in custody by placing individuals on alternatives to detention programs, suspending social visitation, incorporating social distancing practices with staggered meals and recreation times, and through the use of cohorting and medical isolation.
ICE’s public guidance on how detention centers should respond to the pandemic says facilities must ensure that medical isolation is operationally distinct from administrative or disciplinary segregation, or any punitive form of housing. Yet, as a previous investigation by The Intercept found, a number of ICE facilities have failed to adhere to this requirement. According to detainees at Etowah, solitary confinement was used not only as leverage to discourage requests for testing, but also to isolate people with Covid-19.
The Intercept and In These Times spoke with five men who tested positive for Covid-19 while detained at Etowah. Each said he spent weeks in solitary.
Shemoi Edwards developed Covid-19 symptoms just days before Golding. At first, he planned to quietly sweat out the illness. But with a history of bronchitis and a recent diagnosis of sickle cell trait, he got too scared to ride it out on his own. He hobbled over to an officer and told him he felt like he’d been hit by a truck. Not long afterward, Edwards said, he was transferred to solitary.
The men universally described the conditions in solitary confinement as squalid. In their affidavits, many expressed distress that they no longer had access to mental health professionals, the law library, sunlight, or fresh air. Civil detention have turned into torture, Falaye Kourouma wrote.
Bakhodir Madjitov, who was deported in September, wrote that there were cockroaches and flies in the unit. Golding wrote that he was fed uncooked frozen food and didn’t have access to drinking water because the sink in his cell didn’t flow properly.
No one wants to be treated how I am currently being treated, Dawa Sherpa wrote in his affidavit. I fear that I may die here at Etowah County Detention Center.
One detainee said he spent 21 days in isolation. Another counted 35 days, and a third counted 54. Golding said he was in solitary confinement from July 6 until August 28. Edwards said he was put in isolation on June 29 and wasn’t released until July 28.
We was getting the same treatment as [when] you get in trouble, Edwards said in an interview. Even though it’s probably a different word – it’s ‘isolation’- it’s still a form of punishment that they’re putting us in.
Edwards received the results from his coronavirus test on July 8; he was positive. One day later, Golding received the same bad news.
In isolation, the men say, their phone access was limited. They could only make calls during a brief daily free period (no more than 75 minutes), which occurred on an irregular schedule. Sometimes, they said, it might be in the middle of the night.
Before he got sick, Edwards would speak with his mother and brother a few times each week. After not hearing from him during the first week of July, his brother Nickoy Edwards, who is a police officer in Flint, Michigan, called Etowah. The first person he spoke to transferred him to someone else. That person answered and told me that they looked in the computer and they told me Shemoi is OK. He’s on the floor. And nothing is wrong with him.
Siblings Brandon Mills, Shemoi Edwards, and Nickoy Edwards in Flint, Mich., on Nov. 20, 2020.Photo: Cydni Elledge for The Intercept
Nickoy believed the facility – at first. Then, a few weeks later, his brother finally called, telling Nickoy he was in solitary confinement and had the coronavirus.
Nickoy called Etowah again. And they told me the same thing: ‘He’s OK.’
I felt like they weren’t telling the truth, Nickoy said. I was a little upset and concerned because I want him to be OK.
Their mother, Tyson Mills, also began to worry. When she was finally able to get through to Etowah, Mills explained who she was and asked about her son. Ma’am, he’s OK, Mills said she was told. He’s all right. Nothing to worry about. She said it was suggested that her son didn’t have enough money on his commissary account to call. It wasn’t nice, Mills said. I was like breaking down in tears.
Golding’s mother, Mervine Duhaney-Metzgar, said she called Etowah six times after not hearing from her son. At first, her calls were transferred between different people. And it happened that I called again, and they told me that everything is OK, and there’s no evidence of any illness being there. And I know that wasn’t true, she said. It was very disturbing as a mother.
Nicholas Phillips, Shemoi Edwards’s attorney, said the lack of communication isn’t surprising. ICE is essentially kind of a closed book to us, he said. Etowah adds another level of complexity to it because Etowah is a county jail. And so it’s not really run by ICE. It’s run by the Etowah County sheriff’s department.
According to a 2015 agreement between Etowah and the federal government, Etowah is responsible for medical care inside the facility. But ICE’s 36-page guidance on how detention facilities should handle the pandemic does not say anything about how (or whether) facilities should notify the family members of immigrants who get sick.
Jessica Vosburgh, an attorney at the Adelante Alabama Worker Center, has represented immigrants seeking release from Etowah because of medical conditions that put them at risk during the pandemic. Because the jail is a health care provider, HIPAA applies to them, Vosburgh said of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. They have to respect patient privacy, which means not disclosing someone’s medical information without their consent.
When I need to get someone’s medical records from Etowah, I need their signed consent and then [the jail] can share it with me. And I think it would work similarly for a family member, Vosburgh said. I don’t think there’s anything in HIPAA that would require or allow people to lie or provide false information about someone’s health. That’s different than not disclosing, right? If there’s something they can’t disclose, they just have to say, ‘I can’t disclose.’
Even if someone is being imprisoned, they have the right to proper health, to proper medical attention, Golding’s mother, Duhaney-Metzgar, said. Even before Golding got sick, she had contacted her congressperson, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, asking for an investigation into how her son had been treated in ICE custody and requesting that he be transferred to a facility closer to home.
My office has repeatedly reached out to follow up on the case for Mrs. Metzgar’s son Karim, and it has been months since their last reply, Meeks said of ICE. ICE’s response time is simply unacceptable, especially now during a pandemic when it’s a matter of health and safety.
I am so hurt deep down with what’s going on, Duhaney-Metzgar said. Behind it, I strongly know that it’s an act of racism.
Phillips, Edwards’s attorney, agreed. This administration, in my view, does not give a shit about detainees, immigration detainees, he said. So how does it fit into the kind of larger discussion about racial justice and Black Lives Matter? I think it’s an integral aspect of that. I mean, immigration detention is, in many ways, simply an extension of the kind of mass incarceration crisis that America has gone through.
The criminal justice system and the immigration system are deeply entangled, with harsh consequences for Black immigrants in particular. One out of every five people facing deportation because of a criminal conviction is Black. As of July, about half of the people detained by ICE at Etowah were Black, including Golding, Edwards, and many of the other men interviewed for this story. Several are lawful permanent residents who lost their green cards and became deportable after criminal convictions.
Rather than accept deportation, many immigrants remain at Etowah for years as they fight their cases, often because they have nothing to go back to. Golding and Edwards were both born in Jamaica and came to the United States as children. Edwards, now 30, arrived at 15 on a green card; most of his family now lives in the United States. Golding, now 36, arrived at age 9 to reunite with his mother, who had fled an abusive relationship. He has never been back to Jamaica.
Before being incarcerated by ICE, Golding served a 10-year sentence in federal prison. He and his family say they didn’t know there would be immigration consequences for his criminal conviction and that he has served his time.
I just want my son to get to come home, Golding’s mother said. Every one of us has the right to be forgiven.
Edwards was nearing one month in isolation when his third Covid-19 test came back positive. Medical staff at Etowah had informed detainees that they would need two consecutive negative tests to leave solitary and return to the general population – so when a guard later woke Edwards up and told him to pack his things, he was confused. I thought I was going back to my original unit, he said. But then a sergeant appeared and told him he was being released.
And I’m like, OK! Edwards said. So I just got to packing, you know, packed all my legal work, and I gave all my commissary away to everybody.
Two weeks earlier, on July 16, Edwards’s attorney had won a case on behalf of a lawful permanent resident named Jervis Glenroy Jack. The federal government had sought to deport Jack based on a conviction for unlawful gun possession in New York state, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state-level gun conviction did not qualify as a deportable offense.
Edwards’s case was nearly identical to Jack’s: Edwards, a longtime permanent resident, served two and a half years in prison on a similar conviction in New York. When Edwards was out on parole, immigration authorities took him into custody.
Doing his own legal research, Edwards came across the Jack case in 2019 and contacted Phillips, who agreed to represent him. After Phillips won Jack, he assumed the reversal would also help Edwards, but no one from ICE notified him until moments before Edwards was released.
Outside Etowah, Edwards asked the ICE officer for his ID and a Greyhound bus ticket. I’m basically explaining to him, like, I’m from New York. How are you going to bring me all the way down here and then just tell me that you just gonna release me with no ID, no bus ticket, plane ticket, no nothing to get back to my family? Edwards said. He was saying that because the way I won my case, he’s not entitled to give me anything.
The ICE officer did give Edwards something: directions to a Greyhound bus station a mile away. After that, Edwards was on his own. He had about $100 and a dead cellphone. It was 87 degrees as he started his walk down the four-lane highway, schlepping a heavy black garbage bag full of legal paperwork. He stopped at the first gas station he saw to buy a mask. Etowah released him with a mask that was weeks old and filthy, Edwards said, despite the fact that he had recently tested positive for the virus.
When he finally made it to the bus station, he asked about the next trip to New York. Two days, the person at the counter said. And Flint? A week. His best bet would be to keep walking up to Walmart, where he could buy a phone or a charger.
At Walmart, Edwards started making calls: to Phillips, to his brother, and to Shut Down Etowah, an organization that helps immigrants after their release from ICE custody. I basically explained my situation, and they said, ‘We’re gonna have somebody come and pick you up. Just stay at the Walmart.’
Shut Down Etowah booked Edwards on a flight to Detroit that same evening, and a volunteer accompanied him to the airport in Birmingham. It was eerily empty, and Edwards was nervous. He didn’t have any identification and worried he would be sent back to jail.
My main mindset was that I do not want to go through this in a different jail, Edwards said. Even if it’s for two, three hours, or even a day. I do not want to do that.
The volunteer from Shut Down Etowah did most of the talking, pulling different legal documents out of Edwards’s bag to explain to the airport security officer who he was and why he didn’t have an ID. Somehow it worked.
I guess the guy must have felt sorry for me, Edwards said.
Arriving in Michigan felt surreal to Edwards. Everyone had grown up so much in the years he’d been away. They literally was babies when I left, Edwards said. His mom calls every day to hear his voice, but he hasn’t been able to see her. She lives in Massachusetts, and Edwards hasn’t been able to get a driver’s license.
Edwards now works long hours at a factory, and he’s decided to stay in Flint. He’s started working with Shut Down Etowah and speaks with college students and other groups about his experience in immigration detention and the criminal justice system. After almost a decade behind bars, he doesn’t believe anyone should be incarcerated, especially not for immigration violations.
You saying we incarcerate somebody for rehabilitation? I don’t see it. They don’t rehabilitate you. They just put you in there till your time up and be like, ‘Go.’ That’s it, he said. I don’t feel like we have the right to do that.
Edwards, Golding, and the other men interviewed for this story who contracted the virus while at Etowah say they’re experiencing possible long-term symptoms of Covid-19: trouble breathing, exhaustion, gastrointestinal problems, and more. While Edwards is at home with family, Golding remains alone and in custody. ICE detention has been far more degrading than any prison confinement I have experienced, Golding said. As far as rights go, you basically have no rights.
This article was supported by a grant from the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting.
Originally Published in Politico
Zach Montellaro and Daniel Lippman – December 2, 2020
Apportionment data from the 2020 census, which determines how many House seats each state will get for the next decade, may not be delivered until after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee.
The Democratic majority on the committee was vague on how it received the internal documents, saying only that it obtained them from another source after the Trump administration declined to turn over various documents when the committee asked for them. One of the documents released by the committee, dated Nov. 27, says the expected delivery for that final apportionment count is Jan. 23, just days after Biden is inaugurated and President Donald Trump leaves office. Public release of the data is also scheduled for that day.
A delay in delivering the data to the White House that runs past Jan. 20 could shoot down a Trump priority: excluding, for the first time, some number of undocumented immigrants from the count. If those immigrants weren’t included in the population figures used to apportion House seats, it could benefit Republicans politically, reducing representation in Democratic states and areas where there are more immigrants.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who chairs the committee, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross demanding that the agency produce a full and unredacted set of the documents requested by the Committee, threatening a subpoena if he does not comply.
A second document released by the agency, dated Nov. 19 and labeled pre-decisional – for discussion purposes only, details 13 anomalies within the data that need to be addressed.
In a statement, the Census Bureau did not deny the authenticity of the documents posted by the committee but said the timeline is not certain yet.
As the Director and senior career U.S. Census Bureau officials told members of Congress and Congressional staff last week, the estimated date that apportionment data will be complete remains in flux, an unsigned statement from the Census Bureau read. Internal tracking documents would not convey the uncertainty around projected dates and may fail to reflect the additional resources employed to correct data anomalies.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on a case centered around Trump’s July directive to remove the undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count.
During the arguments, many judges seemed highly skeptical of the constitutionality of the president’s move – but also seemed uncomfortable about a lack of clarity from the Trump administration on how many people it would seek to exclude, and how it would exactly go about doing so.
Late last month, The New York Times reported that the Census Bureau would be unable to deliver apportionment data until at least Jan. 26. At the time, the Bureau refused to comment directly on the Times’ reporting and pointed reporters to a statement from Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham that did not directly address the timeline but described “certain processing anomalies” that had “been discovered.”
But at the oral arguments on Monday, acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall, who spoke for the Trump administration, indicated that while it looked like the Bureau would be unable to deliver apportionment data by the year-end statutory deadline, some data could be delivered in January, without giving a particular timeline.
Biden opposes Trump’s memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count. In a statement on Tuesday, he urged Congress to extend the deadlines for the bureau to deliver the count. Congress must give the experts at the Census the time to make sure everyone gets counted accurately, Biden said.
