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Guest contribution — American Immigration Council: Biden has 64 days left in office to protect vulnerable immigrants

by Community Contributor • November 18, 2024 • Comments Off

Your weekly summary from the Council.

LATEST ANALYSIS

Biden Should Use His Authority to Protect Vulnerable Immigrants Before He Leaves Office

The federal government currently lacks the resources to fulfill Trump’s pledge of mass deportations in the first months of his presidency, but ICE?can and will act?quickly to target immigrants for arrests. However, before that begins, President Biden has two months left in office to take decisive action to protect people at risk under Trump’s indiscriminate immigration enforcement plans.

Judge Strikes Down ‘Keeping Families Together’ Parole Process

After initially blocking the Biden administration’s recent move to promote family unity for some U.S. citizens with undocumented spouses in August, a federal judge in Texas issued a final judgment ending the parole process altogether.

FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Last week, President-elect Trump announced that he plans to make Tom Homan his “border czar” during his second term in office. Homan served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2017 to 2019.

Homan was instrumental in crafting the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy that led to thousands of family separations. The policy aimed to deter migration from Central America and Mexico by separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The legacy of Homan’s family separation policy is long-lasting, and the harm is incalculable.

Through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the American Immigration Council sought to track the policy’s evolution, implementation, and damage.

Trump also plans install immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.

Miller was the architect behind some of Trump’s most anti-immigrant policies during his first term, including the Muslim Ban and the slashing of refugee admissions into the United States.

This blog from the Council recounts how Miller’s anti-immigrant ideology found its way into the first Trump administration.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“What we know from [Tom Homan’s] prior work and his recent comments is he supports a putative, harsh and cruel agenda of enforcement of civil immigration law. He will use rhetoric about public safety to play on people’s fears to build support for an agenda that imposes pain and suffering on immigrant communities and undermines the best interest of the United States.”

– Policy Director Nanya Gupta for Politico