El Magonista | Vol. 10, No. 26 | July 7, 2022 | DACA on Life Support. Prognosis: Negative

Story & Photos by Kevin McGill | Los Angeles Times | JUL. 6. 2022

By Mohar Chatterjee | POLITICO | JUL. 6, 2022
Photo by Drew Angerer for Getty Images

The federal appeals court is hearing a Texas-led challenge to the Obama-era program protecting migrants.

A panel of federal judges in New Orleans on Wednesday appeared unconvinced by the Justice Department’s arguments defending the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with the fate of nearly 600,000 so-called Dreamers hanging in the balance.

The three-judge panel is hearing appeals by the Biden administration, liberal states and individual DACA recipients to U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision a year ago that held DACA to be unlawful. Hanen’s 2021 ruling ordered the Department of Homeland Security to no longer approve new applicants to the program, which grants work permits and protection from deportation to young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. However, the order allowed DHS to continue to process DACA renewals as the issue moved through the courts.

Wednesday’s arguments before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals took place just over a decade after President Barack Obama created the DACA program through executive action. Much of the roughly 45-minute argument session was devoted to whether Texas and other states suing to block the program could show enough impact on them to proceed with the court case.

“The relevant question here for summary judgment is whether… [Texas] has shown at least a dollar of expenditures that would be remedied by the removal of DACA, and whether some individual who has received that sort of spending under DACA will leave the United States,” Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone II told the judges... READ MORE

By Rafael Bernal | TheHill.com | JUL. 6, 2022 | Photo by Getty Images

An appellate court on Wednesday heard arguments on a key immigration case that could determine the future of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants.

The case, which involves the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, riled up opponents and supporters of the Obama-era program, but it’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

“There is no established timeline for when they must or will decide the case,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund.

“But we do know that when a decision is rendered it is likely that whichever side finds itself in disagreement with the decision will then consider further action. Either request for a full hearing by the entire 5th Circuit Court of Appeals or petition to the Supreme Court,” added Saenz.

A 5th Circuit panel in New Orleans took up the appeal led by the Biden administration, a group of DACA beneficiaries and the state of New Jersey against a ruling by District Judge Andrew Hanen, who last year decreed DACA to be illegal... READ MORE

By Priscilla Alvarez | CNN | JUL. 6, 2022 | Photo by Jacquelyn Martin

(CNN) A federal appeals court in New Orleans heard arguments Wednesday on the legality of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, setting up another high-stakes legal clash over immigration that could impact hundreds of thousands of people.

DACA, created in 2012, was intended to provide temporary reprieve to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, a group often described as "Dreamers." Many of those are now adults.

There are more than 611,000 immigrants enrolled in the program, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The case before the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday could impact hundreds of thousands of immigrants who rely on the program as well as those who might benefit.

The three-judge panel, two of whom are appointees of former President Donald Trump, occasionally chimed in during the hearing, largely focusing on the states' standing. Texas -- in its lawsuit originally brought along with Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia -- argues that the program placed an undue burden on the states and amounted to executive overreach.

Judd Stone, who argued on behalf of Texas, suggested that at least some DACA recipients would leave the country without the program... READ MORE

By Jess Bravin | The Wall Street Journal | JUN. 30, 2022
Photo by Patrick T. Fallon for AFP/Getty

Policy denies U.S. entry to Central Americans seeking asylum while their claims are pending.

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Biden administration could cancel the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program, which required authorities either to jail asylum applicants from Central America or deny them U.S. entry until their cases are resolved.

The court found the Biden administration acted within its discretion by ending the program, overturning lower-court rulings that required the Department of Homeland Security to enforce the policy, which President Biden campaigned on ending. 

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that Congress never has provided sufficient funding to detain the vast numbers of migrants seeking asylum. At the same time, the U.S. cannot unilaterally expel to Mexico the citizens of Central American countries covered by the policy.

The lower court “imposed a significant burden upon the Executive’s ability to conduct diplomatic relations with Mexico,” the chief justice wrote, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh. It forced the government “to the bargaining table with Mexico, over a policy that both countries wish to terminate,” and asserted authority “to supervise its continuing negotiations with Mexico to ensure that they are conducted ‘in good faith... READ MORE

It’s one of the deadliest mass-casualty events connected to border militarization in years. The number of migrants found dead in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio Monday rose to more than 50 on Tuesday. Another 16 people, including four children, were transported to hospitals with heat-related illnesses.

Across Latin America, the terrified parents, children and siblings of people who recently crossed the border are desperately trying to learn whether their loved ones are among the dead. Calls have been pouring into search and rescue groups such as Aguilas del Desierto. This San Diego-based volunteer group was started by Ely Ortiz, a Mexican, whose brother died trying to enter the U.S. in 2009.

“They want to know whether we know their names or nationalities,” Octavio Soria, a Aguilas del Desierto volunteer, told me. Authorities hadn’t released that information when we spoke. “We’re telling them to call their consulates and watch the news. At any moment they could release the names.” Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard later said on Twitter that the dead include 22 Mexican nationals, seven Guatemalan nationals and two Honduran nationals, among others. 

When I spoke to Soria, he had just gotten off the phone with a woman in Guatemala. He had a hard time understanding her because she primarily spoke an Indigenous language. But she was crying and he gathered from her broken Spanish that she wanted information about her daughter, who had recently crossed the border with her 7-year-old child. She hadn’t heard from them since last Thursday... READ MORE

Lawrence Del Mese described the gang as a 'fraternal group that worked hard and received some recognition.'

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s former chief of staff testified Friday he belonged to an alleged deputy gang known as the Grim Reapers for more than two decades, but became disenchanted and removed the notorious group’s gruesome tattoo from his ankle for the sake of his job.

“Why did you remove the Grim Reaper tattoo?” William Forman, an attorney for the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission asked retired Deputy Lawrence Del Mese during the third public hearing in an ongoing investigation of deputy gangs.

“Because I believed it had become something that didn’t serve me in any purpose,” Del Mese said, adding he got rid of the tattoo in 2018 following his appointment as a top aide to Villanueva. “The perception is a lot different than it was in 1990. It can become a liability to the employee, their career and the department.”

Del Mese, who testified via video for health reasons, was reluctant to disclose his membership in the Grim Reapers. He told the commission he was invited to join while serving as a deputy at the Lennox station.

“It was a fraternal group that worked hard and received some recognition from its peers,” Del Mese said in describing the Grim Reapers. He noted that his tattoo included “22,” signifying he was the 22nd member to join.

Forman pressed Del Mese for more details regarding his Grim Reapers membership and details about the tattoo... READ MORE

Former President Vicente Fox and his family, who decided to live in Mexico, are dedicated to attending to the tasks that arise from the "Fox Center" in Guanajuato, as well as the "Fundación Vamos México" and "Crisma."

MEXICO - The auditorium is a reverberation of students. The corridors, the dining rooms, the living rooms. They are the children of Mexicans from several universities born in the United States or taken to this country from a very young age. They visit the Fox Center with the aim of looking for a different way out from their parents.

"What do we do with migration?" they ask.

It is no coincidence that the young people arrive at the Fox Center, a former hacienda, a non-governmental organization's work center and hotel located in San Cristóbal del Rincón, Guanajuato, just over 300 kilometers north of Mexico City.

It is the place where former President Vicente Fox was born and he dedicates his life to this project after he left Los Pinos in 2006 and put an end to the seven-decade hegemony of a single party: the Institutional Revolutionary (PRI).

Young visitors from the United States are there for an agreement between the University of California San Diego (UCSD), former President of Mexico Vicente Fox and his wife Marta Sahagún. They seek to train binational leaders among many other activities related to the empowerment of vulnerable groups.

They will soon inaugurate a UCSD study center that will offer courses and classes in Spanish online from the campus library. The library of the Fox Center was built by the architect and professor Francisco Serrano, who in turn is the author of the Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City... READ MORE

The L.A. Rebellion film movement, born at UCLA in 1969, enabled minority student directors — Black, Chicano, Asian American and Native American — to tell the world about their communities.

At the end of the 1960s, a decade roiled by assassinations, race riots and war, UCLA responded to the turmoil by creating the Media Urban Crisis (MUC) pilot program. Eight months after two Black Panthers were killed on campus by rivals at Campbell Hall, Elyseo Taylor — then UCLA’s only African American film professor — launched MUC with a grant from the Ford Foundation and a major assist from his student Moctesuma Esparza ’71, ’73.

A natural-born organizer, by age 18 Esparza had already co-founded the Chicano community newspaper La Raza and helped organize the weeklong East L.A. walkouts. The March 1968 demonstrations saw more than 15,000 Mexican American students walk out of seven different high schools in East Los Angeles to protest inequality in education.

“I did OK as a student, but that wasn’t really my gig,” Esparza says. “My gig was being an organizer and seeking social justice.” After Esparza went through UCLA’s registration cards and learned that the roughly 30,000 students included only 40 Mexican Americans, he put together a plan with Taylor aimed at diversifying what was then called the Department of Motion Pictures, Television and Radio. The goal: train and equip Black, Chicano, Asian American and Native American UCLA students so they could make films about their communities... READ MORE

By Luke Money & Rong-Gong Lin II | Los Angeles Times | JUN. 30, 2022
Photo by Fabian Sommer

What to know about Paxlovid, Molnupiravir and other treatments in California.

The lines on the at-home test made it official: You’re positive for the coronavirus. Now what? Week over week, tens of thousands of Californians are asking themselves that same question, as the pandemic’s latest wavecontinues to demonstrate its stubborn sticking power. 

Here are some important steps you can take:

There are two antiviral oral medications available for eligible patients, and they can get them at no cost. But you need to start taking the pills within five days of the start of symptoms. With all anti-COVID drugs, it’s best to take the drugs as soon as symptoms begin. Paxlovid is available for people age 12 and older who weigh at least 88 pounds. Molnupiravir can be given to those 18 and over, but it is not advised for patients who are pregnant and is recommended only if other medications aren’t available. 

Recipients are eligible if they have one or more risk factors for progression to severe COVID-19. Ask your healthcare provider whether you qualify...
READ MORE