- The administration followed up on one of the many Executive Orders signed on January 20th by announcing a new travel ban on Wednesday evening. The new policy means a near total ban on immigrant and non-immigrant entry from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Individuals from these countries will not be issued visas to travel to the US if (1) they are outside the country when the policy goes into effect on Monday and (2) do not already have a valid visa to enter the country when the policy goes into effect on Monday. This new travel ban would seem to only impact those who are in the process of applying for a visa or might do so in the future. Individuals who already have visas should be impacted by this policy, and we do not anticipate seeing the same chaos at airports that we saw when the 2017 travel ban was announced.
Seven other nations are seeing some restrictions on visa availability. The new policy suspends the issuance of visitor or student visas to nationals from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
- Public opposition to the House reconciliation bill is slowly increasing as more and more of what the package contains. Steep cuts to Medicaid spending appear to be getting the most attention as the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House package would result in 11 million losing coverage under the program and another 5 million losing coverage due to proposed changes in the ACA subsidies. At the same time, opposition to trillions more in deficit spending has some fiscal conservatives in the Senate balking at the bill’s price tag. With a slim GOP majority in the Senate, leadership has to walk a tightrope to pass the bill by their July 4th deadline. Any changes made in the Senate would have to also be voted on by the House, where the original package passed by only one vote.
- While Congress spends months determining how to distribute federal spending, the administration again shows that they will ignore the co-equal branch of government. Earlier this week, the State Department took $250 million that Congress had appropriated for refugee resettlement and gave it to DHS in order to support the agency’s efforts to encourage people to voluntarily deport themselves. The money would go to paying for flights and to provide an “exit bonus”.
- Late last week, DHS made leadership changes within ICE as it seeks to significantly increase immigration arrests. The administration has set a goal of 3,000 civil immigration arrests per day, while leaving the door open to further increase that number. Daily arrests since the inauguration had averaged 656, but Tuesday saw a new record set with over 2,200 arrests.
- On Thursday, DHS released a national list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that were targets for defunding under the administration’s anti-immigrant policies. However, the list caused great confusion and it was unclear what criteria the administration was using to come up with the list and a number of jurisdictions included actively cooperate with the mass arrests. As a result, DHS quickly removed the list from their website over the weekend. Expect the list to be revised and reposted in the near future.
- Relatedly, Chelsea and Somerville continue to push back against Trump Administration efforts to defund “sanctuary jurisdictions”. The two cities had filed suit against the administration back in February to prevent cuts to funding. On Tuesday, the two cities took the next step in their suit by asking the court to issue a preliminary injunction to block the administration from introducing any funding cuts. The two cities are represented in their suit by Lawyers for Civil Rights.
- On Wednesday, a federal judge in Texas blocked the state’s 2+ decade old in-state tuition law. The Trump Administration had filed suit to block the law only hours earlier, and the judge issued the injunction after the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told the court that his office supported the lawsuit. While the judge’s ruling only impacts Texas, it will likely prompt similar lawsuits by the administration and others challenging in-state tuition policies in other states.
- A federal judge in New York ruled on Wednesday that the administration must provide hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador with an opportunity to challenge their detention in the Central American country. The administration will have one week to detail to the court how it will facilitate such challenges.