In today’s immigration news: Immigrant Girl Scouts; migrant worker mental health resources in MN; Texas SB 4 blocked again; more.
Despite widespread anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States, local private and public efforts to support and integrate immigrants continue. Among recent examples: Girl Scouts in New York and a new mental health initiatives in Minnesota.
In New York, Girl Scouts are welcoming young immigrants to their ranks.
[CBS] “Once a week in a midtown Manhattan hotel, dozens of Girl Scouts gather in a spare room made homey by string lights and children’s drawings. They earn badges, go on field trips to the Statue of Liberty, and learn how to navigate the subway in a city most have just begun to call home.
“They are the newest members of New York City’s largest Girl Scout troop. And they live in an emergency shelter where 170,000 asylum seekers and migrants, including tens of thousands of children, have arrived from the southern border since the spring of 2022. …
“Launched by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York in 2017, Girl Scouts Troop 6000 is a program for girls living in the New York City Shelter System.”
Mental health care is in short supply all over the state, and especially so for lower-income people and people in rural areas. Add the difficulties of language and migration, and the difficulties escalate exponentially. The Bienvenido program, begun in Indiana, now works to help migrant farm workers in Minnesota access needed mental health care.
[MinnPost] “The program makes space for people to talk about their migration experience and adjustment to a new life. It also allows for people to build relationships with each other and become more involved in their local communities, which helps spur a sense of belonging, Perez Jr. said.
“Minnesota’s iteration of Bienvenido is meant to reach migrant Latino workers who are in high stress jobs with minimal support structures in place. …
“Alvarez de Davila said that many migrant workers don’t talk about their emotions because they don’t have safe spaces to do so. They also tend to not have medical insurance, so there isn’t a formal way for them to talk about their mental health — and their supervisors and employers generally don’t offer insurance, either, she said.
“The first round of the program took place in Worthington, a city of about 14,000 residents in southwestern Minnesota. …
“University of Minnesota Extension, one of two organizations that run Bienvenido programs in the state, is in conversation with companies in both Waseca and Owatonna about the program coming to their employees. …
“Derksen said the program could potentially be rolled out among farm workers. She’s talked with people at the Minnesota Farmers Union and the Minnesota Farm Bureau and said their initial reactions to the idea seemed promising.”
And in other news
A three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 vote that Texas’s anti-immigrant SB 4 law must remain on hold while court challenges proceed.
[Washington Post] “The same three-judge panel, based in New Orleans, has scheduled a hearing April 3 to review a lower-court ruling last month that said the law is probably unconstitutional and blocked it from taking effect. In that ruling, U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra, a Republican appointee in Austin, said the law intruded more into federal powers over immigration than an Arizona immigration law that the Supreme Court partly struck down in 2012. …
“In its decision late Tuesday to continue blocking the law, the 5th Circuit appeals court noted: ‘For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power. Despite this fundamental axiom, [Senate Bill 4] creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses and related procedures regarding unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the country and their removal.’ The 50-page ruling added that ‘the Texas entry and removal laws also significantly impair the exercise of discretion by federal immigration officials.’”
Latino and farmworker communities in Ohio have long known that they have been targeted by law enforcement. Now a new study documents the practices, using information obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.
[Immigration Impact] “Numerous I-213s showed a common pattern of conduct: an [Ohio State Highway Patrol] trooper stopped a vehicle for a traffic violation such as speeding; the driver showed the trooper identification from another jurisdiction, such as a valid out-of-state license; the trooper contacted Border Patrol to “assist” in identifying the driver. All too often, Border Patrol agents investigated and detained not only the drivers, but the passengers as well. These detentions led to arrests, immigration detention, and likely removals.
“The collusion between local law enforcement agencies and Border Patrol is well-known to northern Ohio communities. State and local law enforcement agencies like the OSHP often work in concert with Border Patrol agents in constructing a dragnet that serves as a force multiplier for Border Patrol to funnel immigrants—mostly Latinos without a criminal history—into deportation proceedings. These enforcement practices often go unchecked despite accounts suggesting a pattern of potentially unconstitutional practices.
“This unchecked enforcement upends the lives of immigrants who have developed deep ties to the United States and often impacts U.S. citizens and immigrants with lawful status who are part of mixed status families. It also makes Latino residents and people of color who are U.S. citizens or lawful immigrants undue targets of enforcement. Immigrants of color, including those of Latin American origin who live, travel, or work in Ohio, often bear the brunt of these disproportionate and discriminatory immigration enforcement practices.”
El Paso doesn’t want or need state troops. Doesn’t matter. Texas Governor Greg Abbottsent soldiers to El Paso anyway.
[Border Report] “Hundreds of specially trained Texas National Guard soldiers were deployed to El Paso Tuesday afternoon, March 26. …
“That same afternoon El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said he had confidence in the City’s relationship with Border Patrol and would not actively seek the state’s help for border enforcement.
“’You’re talking about the National Guard. It’s something that we didn’t request, and we won’t request from the state of Texas,’ Leeser said.”
According to USCIS, 40 percent of asylum seekers interviewed in San Diego during the past 12 months failed to establish “credible fear” of persecution if they are returned home. That means that a large majority of asylum seekers convincingly demonstrated the danger of return.
[Border Report] “Credible fear is a benchmark required for migrants to establish how they will be persecuted or harmed if they are sent home due to political beliefs, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and other reasons. …
“According to San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, more than 13,000 asylum-seekers who did establish a credible fear have been dropped off at transit centers in San Diego Since last month.
“Most have been bused to the Iris Avenue trolley station just a few miles north of the border.”
Immigration news 