In Other News

June 29, 2022 -- The death toll from Monday’s discovery of dozens of migrants being smuggled in a tractor-trailer rose to 53 Wednesday, according to local authorities, marking a grim addition to what appears to be a rising death toll among people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. from Mexico. Three people have been arrested in relation to the incident, according to authorities, and two men have been charged with possession of a weapon by a person illegally in the country.

June 28, 2022 -- The number of migrants dead in a suspected smuggling operation rose to 50 on Tuesday, the Mexican consulate reported, a day after dozens of bodies were found lifeless in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio. Roberto Velasco Álvarez, head of North American mission for the Mexican government, wrote on Twitter that 22 of the victims were Mexican nationals, seven were originally from Guatemala and at least two were Honduran. There are 19 individuals for whom no nationality has been determined.

June 16, 2022 -- Immigration arrests along the U.S. southern border rose in May to the highest levels ever recorded, as growing numbers of migrants arrived from Turkey, India, Russia and other nations outside the Western Hemisphere, the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show. CBP made 239,416 arrests along the Mexico border last month, a 2 percent increase from April, according to the totals. The agency is on pace to exceed 2 million detentions during fiscal 2022, which ends in September, after tallying a record 1.73 million in 2021.

June 14, 2022 -- The British government was due to begin sending migrants who arrive in the country illegally to live in Rwanda on Tuesday, a policy buffeted by a series of legal challenges and criticism from church leaders. The first U.K. government flight deporting asylum seekers to the African nation was scheduled to take off Tuesday evening. Seven migrants were scheduled to fly to Rwanda, according to an official, but the government said the plane might not leave if legal challenges are successful.

June 10, 2022 -- The Biden administration Friday plans to sign a migration agreement with Latin American nations that would mark a shift in the approach countries take to refugees and migrants amid unprecedented movement across the region. Administration officials said that the agreement, on the final day of the three-day Summit of the Americas, isn’t binding and is expected to be coupled with commitments from countries including Canada and Spain to resettle migrants from Latin America.

June 6, 2022 -- A Haitian migrant taking part in what could be the largest ever migrant caravan through Mexico to the U.S. is demanding that President Biden keep his promise to allow them to stay once they reach the border. "He promised the Haitian community he will help them," the migrants, who were interviewed by Fox News Friday, said. "He will recall Title 42. He will help us have real asylum."

June 6, 2022 -- Several thousand migrants, many from Venezuela, set off from southern Mexico early Monday aiming to reach the United States, timing their journey to coincide with the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week. Migration activists said the group could be one of the region's largest migrant caravans in recent years.

June 1, 2022 -- President Joe Biden’s open borders policies have led to a more than 10% surge in the United States's illegal immigrant population, according to a new review of federal data. Numbers reviewed by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the illegal population grew from 10.2 million when Biden took office to 11.6 million in April.

May 28, 2022 -- Seeking to escape violence and economic unrest at home, more migrant groups from Cuba, Haiti, and other countries are taking the risky voyages to reach Florida and Puerto Rico.

May 23, 2022 -- Amid record-setting numbers of attempted border crossings and courtroom drama over the fate of Title 42, critics say one voice has been consistently absent from the ongoing immigration debate: the president’s own migration czar. Vice President Kamala Harris attempted to put her stamp on the issue last summer by visiting El Paso and warning migrants “do not come” during a trip to Guatemala.

May 22, 2022 -- The majority of Americans oppose the Biden administration’s decision to end a public health order used to expel migrants at the U.S. border, according to a new POLITICO-Harvard survey, underscoring how a law designed to stop the spread of disease is now widely seen as the best way to control immigration. The survey found that 55 percent of American adults oppose ending the use of the order, known as Title 42, to prevent migrants from entering the U.S., compared to 45 percent who think the order should end.

May 20, 2022 -- A federal judge in Louisiana on Friday prevented the Biden administration from reopening the borders to migrants and asylum seekers, a position backed by 24 states pressing concerns about the costs of illegal immigration and the
spread of the coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the administration’s plan to terminate on Monday an order known as Title 42, which has led to the swift expulsion of most unauthorized border crossers since the earliest days of the pandemic.

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.