Now that President Biden has fulfilled the first part of his promise to end MPP, there are still thousands of people waiting south of the border in a dangerous limbo.
Under the staggered admissions process, individuals who have been waiting the longest in MPP would be prioritized for readmission, along with vulnerable individuals who cannot wait any longer. We believe this is the most fair way to address operational challenges.
Our report also offers suggestions for how the administration could provide relief for those who have already been ordered deported under MPP. We endorse a recommendation from @HIASrefugees on the use of refugee processing for that group.
Here's a copy of the TRO. It claims that "Texas faces irreparable harm from having to provide costly educational, social, welfare, healthcare, and other services to illegal aliens who remain in Texas because Defendants have ceased removing them."
Here is a full copy of the agreement between DHS and the State of Texas.
It was signed by Ken Cuccinelli on behalf of DHS—which, given the fact that he was unlawfully appointed to his job means the entire agreement is null and void on that ground alone.
And it begins—NPR uses an inflammatory picture of a caravan that was broken up days ago for a story about a deportation moratorium that only applies to those here months ago and a policy reversal that wouldn't have affected almost all of the caravan even if they had made it here.
Editors who draft headlines and choose pictures for stories, please, I beg you, these small choices matter a LOT.
I guarantee you that 99% of the people who saw this tweet did not click the story, and as a result will leave with a completely false opinion about what happened.
For those curious, the "migrant caravan" is almost totally broken up. As of last night, ~4,000 out of 7,200 people recorded as entering Guatemala have already returned to Honduras. That's up from 3,000 reported on Tuesday—so that number will keep climbing.
Once Biden had officially taken office, we got the first major action. As part of a standard transition process, the Biden White House froze all regulations which Trump had been trying to finalize at the last hour. I did a thread on what we escaped.
Last night we started getting more changes. One of the first was an order telling CBP to stop putting people into the so-called "Migrant Protection Protocols," a cruel program that's left thousands in a dangerous limbo. But there's still more to do!
Biden revokes the original Muslim Ban and all three Proclamations extending it.
That lifts restrictions on immigrant visas against:
- Burma
- Eritrea
- Iran
- Kyrgzstan
- Libya
- Nigeria
- North Korea
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Syria
- Tanzania
- Yemen
Biden also directs the State Department to immediately resume visa processing of all people subject to the Muslim Ban/African Ban, as well as come up with a plan within 45 days to not only reconsider all previous visa denials but also to consider how to expedite applications.
First, we just BARELY escaped a new regulation severely restricting the H-1B program in many ways which the experts on business immigration have assured me were pretty illegal anyway.
It had already been sent to the Federal Register last week.
We also just barely escaped a dystopian rule that would have expanded biometric collection for all immigration benefits to even the US citizen family members—and impose "continuous vetting" on immigrants.