In Other News

May 19, 2022 -- In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, guest Phillip Linderman discusses the history of the Cuban migrant program and provides policy recommendations. Linderman, a retired State Department Foreign Service Officer, served in Trinidad, Chile, Cuba, and post-communist East Germany before returning to Washington, D.C. to work at the Organization of American States.

May 19, 2022 -- In a 5-4 decision made on Monday, the Supreme Court held that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review factual findings made by the executive branch during deportation proceedings. The ruling in Patel v. Garland means that noncitizens seeking certain forms of discretionary relief under immigration law could be left with no judicial review when the government denies such relief.

May 19, 2022 -- El Paso County in Texas plans to declare a state of emergency as it prepares for a surge of immigration with the Biden administration expected to lift the Title 42 health authority allowing summary deportation of migrants. County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said Thursday morning that the declaration would be filed as soon as that day.

May 18, 2022 -- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has repeatedly claimed that illegal immigrants whose asylum claims fail will be removed "promptly" from the United States – but former Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are pushing back, saying that there is little chance of that happening given the mass release of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and the current policies of the administration.

May 18, 2022 -- Florida’s governor on Wednesday confirmed his intention to sign a new immigration bill that will strengthen the state’s ban on sanctuary cities. Gov. Ron DeSantis said all this during another infrastructure award in Okaloosa County. He said to expect ink on the bill in the next couple of weeks.

May 8, 2022 -- Bruno Silva made his way across the muddy Rio Grande along the Mexican border with El Paso, 11-month-old Maria perched on his shoulders. An exhausted Shyrley Oliveira staggered behind. They looked like just another family of migrants crossing to the U.S., Ms. Oliveira said, recalling the journey from Brazil she made at age 18 in 2019.

May 4, 2022 -- The Biden Administration has approved a temporary rule change that will allow automatic extensions for work visas for noncitizens effective Wednesday. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced a Temporary Final Rule (TFR) that increases the automatic extension period for employment authorization and Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), available to certain EAD renewal applicants, to up to 540 days.

April 19, 2022 -- A 22-year high in apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border in March was partly fueled by record arrivals of migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ukraine, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) figures released this week show. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed migrants 221,303 times along the southern border in March, a 33% jump from February and the highest tally since 2000, according to agency statistics. CBP said 159,900 encounters in March represented unique migrants, citing a 28% rate of repeat border crossings.

April 19, 2022 -- Forty-one percent of Americans report worrying a great deal about the issue of illegal immigration, with another 19% worried a fair amount, according to a March 1-18 Gallup survey. The survey was conducted before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it will soon terminate the emergency powers given to border agents during the pandemic that have allowed them to turn migrants back without an opportunity to seek asylum.

April 18, 2022 -- The U.S. has made more than a million arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border since October, the fastest pace of illegal border crossings in at least the last two decades, according to new data released Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Border agents made 209,906 arrests along the border in March, making it the busiest month in two decades.

April 18, 2022 -- Border Patrol apprehended at least 23 people coming across the southern border whose names are on the terror watchlist in 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by Fox News. Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 27, 2021, there were 23 encounters with individuals whose names matched on the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).

April 18, 2022 -- ICE is getting ready to release as many as 600,000 illegal immigrants into communities before the end of September, the agency told a federal judge, giving an early estimate of the chaos the administration is predicting after it ends the Title 42 pandemic border shutdown. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed the figure in a court filing dealing with how it plans to handle illegal immigrant children who arrive as part of the surge.

April 14, 2022 -- The first of four men accused in a failed plan to build a biotechnology plant in Vermont using tens of millions of dollars in foreign investors’ money raised through a special visa program faces sentencing Thursday. William Stenger, 73, the former president of the Jay Peak ski resort, pleaded guilty last August to providing false documents. In exchange, nine fraud charges were dropped.

April 14, 2022 -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday defied intensifying pressure over his new border policy that has gridlocked trucks entering the U.S. and shut down some of the world’s busiest trade bridges as the Mexican government, businesses and even some allies urge him to relent. The two-term Republican governor, who has ordered that commercial trucks from Mexico undergo extra inspections as part of a fight with President Joe Biden’s administration over immigration, refused to fully reverse course as traffic remains snarled.

April 13, 2022 -- A majority of registered voters in a new poll oppose the White House’s recent decision to rescind Title 42, the policy first imposed under the Trump administration that allowed migrants to be expelled at the border and blocked them from trying to obtain asylum. The poll, conducted by Politico and Morning Consult, found that 54 percent of registered voters surveyed said they oppose the Biden administration removing the border controls, while 35 percent support the move.

April 13, 2022 -- A U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for the Biden administration to implement guidance focusing immigration enforcement on people convicted of serious crimes while it appeals a judge's order that had blocked the policy nationwide. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said on Tuesday that Ohio, Arizona and Montana were unlikely to show that the September memo from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security violated federal immigration law, and their claims of potential harm to states were speculative.

April 11, 2022 -- Over the next six weeks, members of the Texas National Guard will be running training exercises at the U.S. - Mexico border to help prepare for what officials are calling, a possible mass migration event when Title 42 expires in May. "We are prepared and overwhelming a port of entry in Texas is simply just not going to happen," Southwest Border Operations Chief of Staff Colonel Patrick Nolan said.

April 11, 2022 -- Illegal immigrants aged 65 and over will be able to obtain taxpayer-financed health care in the record-breaking $220 billion state budget signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and passed by the legislature — a move critics say will incentivize the undocumented to flood New York for the benefits. A provision in the budget allows up to 20,000 elderly residents living here illegally to apply for Medicaid, the public health insurance program for the needy that served more than 7 million residents during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

April 11, 2022 -- President Joe Biden won the White House while chastising his predecessor’s border policies as inhumane and out of step with American values. But now the issue of immigration has devolved into a political headache for him that is undercutting a centerpiece of his agenda and causing vulnerable Democrats to split from him.

April 11, 2022 -- Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed a Republican-backed bill on Monday that will thwart hard-fought efforts by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, to issue municipal IDs to residents unable to get legal photo IDs. The UG's "Safe and Welcoming Act," which would have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain municipal IDs, faced backlash from the state GOP.

April 6, 2022 -- A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday said federal agencies properly withheld documents related to how they vet applicants for immigration benefits with the aim of uncovering possible terrorist ties, reversing a judge who ordered their disclosure.

April 6, 2022 -- A bipartisan deal to inject $10 billion into Covid relief operations has stalled over a political fight over immigration, potentially delaying the White House's requested money for weeks. The battle centers on the Biden administration's decision to end a pandemic rule known as Title 42, which lets U.S. officials quickly turn away asylum-seekers at the border, citing the pandemic.

April 5, 2022 -- The Biden administration is seeking to clear potentially hundreds of thousands of deportation and asylum cases pending before immigration courts, an unprecedented move that could significantly reduce the current backlog of 1.7 million cases. In a memo dated Sunday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement directed its lawyers to review
cases and try to clear those considered low priority under enforcement guidelines that the administration established last year.

April 5, 2022 -- Republicans had already been agitating over the Biden administration's policies at the border -- and then in came Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Early Tuesday morning in the Capitol, Mayorkas walked into the lion's den, taking a meeting with House GOP members of the "border security caucus" -- a group of members particularly fired up over the announcement last week that the White House would lift Trump-era covid restrictions at the border, known as Title 42. Republicans said they gave him an earful.

April 4, 2022 -- A group of undocumented migrants believed to be from Russia and other Eastern European countries arrived by boat on Sunday in Key West, Fla., raising concerns that the war in Ukraine is spurring refugees and others to seek dangerous new routes to the United States. Alyson Crean, a spokeswoman for the Key West Police Department, said a boat chartered from Cuba docked at the south end of Duval Street, in the heart of the city’s tourist district, around 4 p.m. Sunday.

April 3, 2022 -- Hours before she was gunned down, Anjali Ryot posted an idyllic video of herself sitting on a hammock by the Caribbean Sea in one of Mexico’s hippest resort towns. “Vibing with the ocean,” she wrote in her Instagram account. That night, Ms. Ryot, a California-based travel blogger with some 50,000 Instagram followers, was celebrating her 30th birthday with her husband at La Malquerida, a popular restaurant, when two members of a local drug gang spotted a rival ducking inside.

March 31, 2022 -- The Biden administration is publicly proud of its open border policies and seeks to “expand on the historic progress” it has made over the past year to spend even more taxpayer money in 2023 to process even more illegal aliens into the country and grant them asylum.

March 30, 2022 -- The Republican National Committee (RNC) is launching the first in a video series that zeroes in on the ongoing crisis at the southern border, and the Biden administration's handling of it -- just as numbers are rising ahead of another expected surge this summer. The first video in the series, called "Unchecked; 2 Million" refers to the number of migrant encounters in the 2021 calendar year -- and pins the blame for the massive numbers encountered last year, which overwhelmed Border Patrol agent, on the policies of the new administration.

March 30, 2022 -- The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) went on the offensive Tuesday, outlining plans to respond to a potential spring influx at the border sure to ignite GOP criticism. Officials who spoke with reporters outlined a scenario in which they may need to prepare for as many as 18,000 border crossings per day.

March 30, 2022 -- The Biden administration plans to end its use of Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic border policy that allows the government to immediately turn away migrants at the southern border, by the end of May, according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and officials familiar with the matter. Border officials have expressed concern that, without the rapid-turnback policy, they will quickly be overwhelmed by migrants, leading to dangerous overcrowding in border facilities and releases of people into the U.S. who would normally be jailed or deported.

March 29, 2022 -- The Biden administration is building migrant holding facilities, soliciting contracts for transportation services and deploying additional immigration agents to prepare for a potential unprecedented spike in arrivals of migrants at the southern border if a pandemic restriction is lifted, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said Tuesday.

March 29, 2022 -- Human rights advocates are calling for the Biden administration to stop using a controversial public health rule to deny migrants the right to asylum and instead let it expire on Wednesday. That’s when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Title 42 authority that allows border agencies to immediately expel newly arrived unauthorized migrants comes up for review. The last time this happened – at the end of January – the CDC extended for another 60 days the policy meant to prevent the cross-border spread of COVID-19.

March 28, 2022 -- The Biden administration has started vaccinating migrants claiming asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border for Covid-19, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday. The decision comes after months of debate within the Biden administration, in which time nonprofit organizations along the border including Catholic Charities started administering Covid-19 vaccines to those migrants released to nonprofit shelters so they could apply for asylum.

March 27, 2022 -- Adelante Alabama, the Shut Down Etowah campaign and Detention Watch Network celebrated Friday, calling the decision to stop sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees to the Etowah County Detention Center "a huge win for the national immigrant rights movement."

March 26, 2022 -- The Biden administration’s announcement of sweeping changes to the asylum process is raising concern among some Borderland immigration advocates and attorneys. Currently, seeking asylum is a process that could take several years and would be decided by an immigration judge. With this new policy, asylum seekers will have their claims heard by an asylum officer with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

March 25, 2022 -- The Biden administration is looking to cut more than 25 percent of the bed capacity at immigration detention facilities in its budget request for the next fiscal year, the latest indication that the government is shifting from incarcerating undocumented immigrants to using ankle-monitoring devices and other alternatives. On Friday, the administration announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was ending a contract with a facility that holds immigrants and reducing its use of three others.

March 24, 2022 -- The U.S. will accept up to 100,000 refugees fleeing the fighting in Ukraine as the humanitarian crisis from Russia’s attack on its neighbor worsens, administration officials said Thursday. More than 10 million people in Ukraine have been uprooted by the fighting, the United Nations estimates. More than 3.6 million of them have fled the country, the U.N. says, most bound for Poland.

March 24, 2022 -- Republicans promised that during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing they would go after Jackson’s record, which is exactly what Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., did Wednesday when he accused Jackson of being an activist judge when she ruled against the Trump administration in a 2019 immigration case.
The case, Make the Road New York v. McAleenan, involved whether the Department of Homeland Security acted properly in expanding the eligibility of expedited removal from the U.S. to illegal immigrants who had been in the country from up to two years, when it had previously only been for those in the country for 14 days or less and who were found near the border.

March 24, 2022 -- The Biden administration on Thursday is expected to publish a final rule designed to streamline the asylum process, an effort to remove those fleeing persecution from an immigration court system backlog that can leave them in limbo for years. Under the new rule, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects asylum processes will take several months on average, compared to several years under the current system.

March 24, 2022 -- The Biden administration is preparing to implement a new border policy later this spring to ease massive backlogs in U.S. immigration courts by giving U.S. asylum officers a bigger role in screening migrants, officials announced Thursday. Under the new policy, asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will have the authority to grant humanitarian protection to migrants taken into custody along the border.

March 22, 2022 -- A federal judge in Ohio on Tuesday partially blocked a Biden administration directive that instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to prioritize certain groups of immigrants for arrest and deportation, agreeing with a legal challenge mounted by three Republican-led states. Judge Michael Newman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said a September 2021 memo issued by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas led ICE agents to violate laws mandating the detention of certain immigrants facing deportation because of criminal convictions.

March 22, 2022 -- The Biden administration plans to launch an effort this week to make it easier for some Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion of their country to come to the United States after only a handful of refugees were admitted in the first two weeks of March, according to three people familiar with the matter. The initiative would speed up visa processing for relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents and detail more staff to handle applications for a temporary status known as "humanitarian parole," one of the people said.

March 22, 2022 -- Guatemala's migration institute said on Tuesday it found two boats transporting 50 Cuban migrants and two Honduran migrants trying to reach the United States illegally by sea. The boats were discovered on Monday night by the National Defense Navy in the area of ​​Rio Dulce, a lake and river system on Guatemala's eastern coast, according to a statement by the institute released on Tuesday.

March 22, 2022 -- Nearly 2,000 lawyers at more than 100 law firms and companies are preparing to help Ukrainians living in the United States obtain temporary deportation relief and work permits as part of a volunteer effort organized by law firm Kirkland & Ellis and the non-profit Lawyers for Good Government.

March 21, 2022 -- The Federal Aviation Administration had decided it was illegal to ban drones flying over the border in Del Rio, Texas, amid last year’s surge of Haitian migrants, but imposed the ban after pleading by a Homeland Security official, according to emails obtained by House GOP investigators.