In today’s immigration news: Rubén Garcia’s compassionate work with migrants in El Paso and beyond; Digging into the details of implementation of Biden’s asylum-blocking order; more.
75-year-old Rubén Garcia has spent his life helping others. Now he faces a vicious attack from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Garcia directs Annunciation Hose, which shelters migrants in El Paso—often migrants sent to the shelter by immigration officials. One of these residents is a man injured severely in a fire at a Mexican detention center and granted humanitarian parole by the United States. He has nowhere else to go while he tries to recover the ability to speak and walk. Other residents also have compelling stories.
[Washington Post] “Wilson Alexander Juárez Hernández crossed the border on a stretcher.
“He could not speak or walk. He’d lost so much weight that his fragile, skeletal frame jutted out from his skin. His legs and hands were twisted and locked defensively into a fetal position.
“For three months he’d languished in a hospital bed in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a ventilator pushing oxygen in and out of his weakened lungs. Forty people had died during the fire at an overcrowded Mexican detention center for migrants last spring. He survived, but now he faced a long recovery and the possibility of never walking again. …
“Who might take him in?
“’How could I say no?’ recounted Ruben Garcia, looking at Wilson, who sat in a wheelchair before him. ‘There was no one else.’ …
“There was the Guatemalan woman beaten so badly that local police initially thought she was dead. The Colombian family who left their crime-ridden hometown and now, after crossing the border, had nowhere to go. The 25-year-old mother who learned she had cancer after crossing nine countries to reach the border with her 3-year-old daughter.”
And in other news
President Biden’s June 4 executive order sets out severe restrictions on asylum. But what will those restrictions mean in practice? The regulation detailing the order runs to 194 pages, so it is obviously not simple. An American Immigration Council analysis describes some of the difficulties in implementation of the order.
[American Immigration Council]”The new regulation presumes that the government will have the capacity to subject everyone to expedited removal. This would require the government to not only have enough asylum officers to screen everyone who requests an interview through a “shout test” and conduct fear interviews that (because they require more from the respondent) may take longer than existing interviews do, but also have the detention beds to hold them during this process and then enough deportation flights to return them to their home countries.
“In addition, as the number of countries from which migrants are coming rises, the number of countries to which the U.S. will have to arrange deportation flights becomes ever-longer—making it harder to run full flights frequently. In May 2024, ICE flew 151 removal flights in total, an average of 4.9 per day, which was the third highest total since January 2020, nearly all of which were to destinations in the Western Hemisphere. Some countries, like China and Venezuela, do not permit direct removal flights at all. Without a massive increase in resources, ICE is unlikely to be able to significantly increase these numbers in the near future.
“If the government cannot solve all these operational issues overnight, it will likely have to continue releasing large numbers of people into the country. Importantly, the new regulation does not come with an agreement to allow the U.S. to send more non-Mexican nationals back to Mexico. (Under existing agreements, Mexico accepts 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.) For the last several years, agreements with Mexico have been the U.S.’s primary way to ensure quick removal or expulsion of large numbers of people.
“Without a new agreement, it is all the more likely that this ban will only be applied to some of the people who enter the United States—and who it applies to will vary by time and place, due to resources, rather than due to the merits of their case or their humanitarian needs. In other words, like crackdowns of the past, the new policy creates yet more variation in what happens to someone after they cross the border seeking asylum—which also makes it impossible for the U.S. to send a consistent message to future would-be asylum seekers.”
Deaths in ICE custody have risen dramatically this year.
[NBC] “There have been more deaths in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, than in all 12 months of five of the six preceding years. The only fiscal year for which the 12-month total exceeds the current tally is 2020, during the height of the Covid pandemic. That year, 21 people died while in ICE
The Arizona legislature sent an anti-immigrant proposal directly to voters in the November election. The proposed law is similar to Texas SB 4, which is on hold after court challenges.
[AP] “Arizona’s proposal, approved on a 31-29 vote by the state House, would allow state and local police to arrest people crossing the border without authorization. It would also give state judges the power to order people convicted of the offense to return to their countries of origin.
“The proposal bypasses Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who had vetoed a similar measure in early March and has denounced the effort to bring the issue to voters.”
Immigration news 