- A months-long standoff in Congress ended earlier this week when the president signed a reconciliation bill that provides an additional $70 billion to ICE and CBP. The funding had previously been blocked by Democrats in the Senate who had demanded greater accountability in immigration enforcement. Senate Republicans used the reconciliation process to sidestep a filibuster and pass the additional funding last week, and the bill just narrowly passed in the House on Tuesday. By using reconciliation, Republicans not only avoided Democratic demands for greater accountability, they also avoided most of the guardrails that are included in the normal appropriations process, such as reporting requirements around who is being detained and specific treatments for pregnant women in custody. Worryingly, the bill provides 3-years worth of funding for immigration enforcement, meaning that Congress will have little ability to revive such guardrails until 2029.
- In good news, a federal court in Rhode Island blocked a series of policies put forward by the Trump Administration that target immigrants according to their nationality. In its order last week, the court noted the hypocrisy of the administration’s actions: violating the law in order to target those who are following the law. The court found that all four challenged policies were unlawful and vacated them.
- Benefits Hold Policy: placed a hold on immigration benefit applications (ex. green card applications, asylum applications) for individuals from the 39 countries on the administration’s travel ban list. Processing of these applications could continue, but no final decisions could be made on them.
- Global Asylum Hold Policy: halted the adjudication of all applications for asylum or withholding or removal regardless of the applicant’s country of origin.
- Comprehensive Re-Review Policy: requires that all immigration applications approved after January 20, 2021 be re-reviewed for individuals from a travel ban country.
- Country-Specific Factors Policy: directs USCIS officials to consider nationality as a “significant negative factor” in making discretionary decisions.
The court found that these four policies violate both the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and are therefore invalid. We expect that the administration will quickly appeal this decision to the 1st Circuit. We also know that the administration had made clear in Congressional testimony that they are willing to ignore court orders that they do not agree with, so we are waiting to see how USCIS actually responds to the judge’s order.
- With the World Cup starting on Thursday, international attention has been focused on the negative aspects of US immigration policies and how it could impact the games. Although the US is only one of three countries hosting the Cup this year – along with Canada and Mexico – we are the only one being singled out for how our immigration system has caused disruptions. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, specifically cited concerns with racial profiling, surveillance, and immigration enforcement and the impact they have already had on the World Cup when talking to reporters on Wednesday. Mr. Türk expressed the hope that, “the dehumanisation of the other, the dehumanisation of migrants, the dehumanization of refugees and asylum seekers is put to an end.”
- In a watchdog report issued on Monday, the Inspector General for the Treasury Department found significant concerns with the implementation of an agreement between ICE and the IRS to share data on taxpayers. The controversial policy raises serious privacy concerns and could cost the nation nearly $500 billion in lost tax revenue. In February, a federal judge found that the policy had already led to 47,000 individual violations of privacy rules and two other federal judges blocked the policy due to its violations of taxpayer privacy rights.