El Magonista | Vol. 11, no. 8 | March 9, 2023

The Justice Department is fighting to protect the program in a court challenge brought in Texas by a group of Republican-led states.

The Biden administration has urged a Texas federal judge to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in a case that threatens protections for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children.

The Justice Department argued Thursday that the administration’s latest version of the DACA program, which provides work permits and deportation relief for certain immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors, is a legal use of the government’s authority to decide which undocumented immigrants to prioritize for deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security’s “resources are limited,” which requires the government to reduce the priority for undocumented immigrants who have strong ties to the country, including those who were brought as children and “have never known another country as home,” the DOJ wrote in a court filing.

“DACA is carefully designed to address a difficult National problem involving severe resource constraints and significant humanitarian and policy concerns,” the government said.

The Justice Department is fighting to protect DACA against a court challenge by a group of Republican-led states that argue they face financial costs for housing and employing recipients of the program, known as “Dreamers.”

Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas previously ruled against the Obama administration’s version of the program but left the policy in place for current recipients. But while the government’s appeal was pending, DHS put the program through the formal regulatory process and published a formal rule to address some of Hanen’s concerns about how the immigration program was issued.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit backed Hanen’s earlier ruling but did not review the latest version of the policy, so it sent the case back to Hanen to consider.

In a court filing in January, the Republican states asked Hanen, again, to strike down the latest version of DACA. They argued that while the Biden administration’s new rule “remedies the procedural defects of the DACA Memorandum, it suffers from the same substantive flaws.”

The states also asked the judge to issue a ruling that would block the government from approving new DACA requests, as well as prevent the government from approving renewal requests from current recipients after two years... READ MORE

President Biden should call off construction crews gathering at the southernmost edge of California’s coastline to erect a border wall that epitomizes Trump’s dystopian vision.

The planned double-layered, 30-foot-tall steel wall would create another heartbreak at a historic site for binational unity, Friendship Park, inaugurated 52 years ago by First Lady Pat Nixon. Back then, just a few strings of barbed wire separated the U.S. and Mexico. Archival footage of the park’s 1971 inauguration shows the first lady disturbed by fence on the mesa and asking that it be taken down so she could hug and shake hands with people in Mexico. “I hope there won’t be a fence too long here,” she said. The dream was for a place symbolizing the close relations of two neighbors, not unlike Peace Arch Historical Park on the U.S.-Canada border.

That old footage is a window into an alternate universe, far from the Republican Party’s vicious rhetoric about the border now. It’s also a reminder of what the GOP could be, even as Democrats prove to be disappointing on border issues.

It was President Clinton who oversaw the desecration of Pat Nixon’s dream with construction of a steel wall in the 1990s as he pandered to nativists. It ran across the sand and down into the sea. Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the border was further militarized with surveillance cameras, sensors and more. A secondary fence topped with barbed wire and parallel to the primary one was built under President Obama.

Access to the park came under Border Patrol’s control and discretion after 2007. The agency oversaw binational activities in the area between the two fences for a few hours on weekends, sometimes less: religious activities, civic gatherings and tearful reunions between people standing on the Mexico side and their loved ones on the U.S. side, sometimes touching through the slats of the wall... READ MORE

WASHINGTON —  The Biden administration is considering detaining migrant families who cross into the U.S. without permission as it prepares to end COVID-19 restrictions at the border with Mexico, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussions. That would be a major reversal from late 2021, when officials stopped holding families in detention facilities.

Homeland Security officials are working through how to manage an expected increase of migrants at the border once the pandemic restrictions imposed in 2020 are lifted in May. Detention is one of several ideas under discussion and nothing has been finalized, the officials said.

If families were detained, they would be held for short periods, perhaps just a few days, and their cases would be expedited through immigration court, one official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on “rumors” that the policy was under consideration. “I’m not saying that it is; I’m not saying that it’s not,” she said. She refused to say whether President Biden believed that detaining families was humane.

Under current policy, families who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border are released into the U.S. and told to appear in immigration court at a later date. At the height of the pandemic, few families were detained, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are now using those facilities to hold single adults who cross the border without permission... READ MORE

Dr. Gonzalo Santos is a professor emeritus of sociology, faculty advisor of California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) United Now for Immigrant Rights, and lifelong activist. Originally from Mexico.

Santos came to the United States in 1970 and has participated in many social movements including the Chicano Movement, the Peace Movement, the Solidarity Movement, and the Immigrants Rights Movement. He taught at CSUB for 30 years before his recent retirement. 

Santos was recently awarded the keys to Mexico City by the city’s current mayor and frontrunner candidate for Mexican President, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. This is a great honor and recognition of his lifelong work on behalf of the Mexican diaspora in the United States. 

“I feel it was a great honor not bestowed on me, but on the Mexican diaspora because we had not been recognized, and by getting the keys to Mexico City, it was a way of recognizing our importance and membership to the great Mexican nation,” said Santos... READ MORE

The law was signed in 2014 by then-Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican now in the U.S. Senate. 

MIAMI — A group of employers, students and community leaders expressed alarm Thursday over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposal to reverse a law that allows undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college and university tuition.

DeSantis, who is expected to launch a bid for president, has proposed reversing the 2014 measure as part of a package of legislation cracking down on illegal immigration. 

“It never occurred to me in 2014 that we would be convening again to deal with the issue of in-state tuition,” Eduardo Padrón, former president of Miami Dade College, said Thursday at a news conference in Miami. 

The news conference was organized by the American Business Immigration Coalition, or ABIC, a bipartisan group that advocates for immigration reform.

“This is an issue of fairness and common sense and it’s good for our economy. If you put roadblocks at a time when there is great need in fields like engineering, doctors, nursing, it’s an ill-advised and ill-conceived idea," said Padrón, a former board chair of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. 

About 40,000 students enrolled in higher education in Florida are considered undocumented, with about 12,000 eligible for DACA and about 28,000 ineligible, according to the Higher Education Immigration Portal. Each year about 5,000 Florida students who do not have permanent legal status graduate from high school in the state. DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, offers young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children temporary protection from deportation and permission to legally work... READ MORE

A key question is whether six GOP-led states have legal standing.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing arguments in two cases challenging President Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.

Critics of the Biden administration's plan to cancel federal student loan debt for more than 40 million Americans say it's expensive, unfair and an abuse of executive power.

As supporters of the program protested outside, Chief Justice John Roberts and other conservative justices zeroed in on the issue of executive authority and separation of powers, questioning whether Congress needed to sign off on such broad relief.

"Congress shouldn't have been surprised when half a trillion dollars is wiped off the books?" Roberts asked Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the Biden administration.

"We take very seriously the idea of separation of powers and that power should be divided to prevent its abuse," Roberts added, making a comparison to the Supreme Court's decision to block former President Donald Trump's unilateral attempt to dismantle the DACA program for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Prelogar, in turn, argued that the education secretary has the authority to provide relief under the HEROES Act, a 2003 law aimed at ensuring federal student loan borrowers would not be economically devastated during a national emergency, in this case, the COVID pandemic.

"Well, of course, we think Congress did address this expressly here," Prelogar said. "And Congress directed that in the context of a national emergency -- that is the limitation of the HEROES Act -- so the secretary can't invoke this whenever he wants, there has to be that predicate: war or military operation or national emergency."

The group of six GOP-led states on Tuesday challenging the program before the Supreme Court, were questioned by liberal justices to answer the critical question of how, exactly, they are harmed... READ MORE

It is not the first time that the Supreme Court has suggested that President Biden has overstepped his authority, but the case could curtail his ambitions.

WASHINGTON — One of President Biden’s most ambitious proposals — a $400 billion program to forgive student loan debt for 40 million Americans — could become the latest victim of a legal tug of war with the Supreme Court over the powers of the presidency.

Conservative justices on the court signaled Tuesday that they are deeply skeptical that Mr. Biden has the power to wipe out such a vast amount of student debt. In oral arguments, several justices said they believed a program that costs so much and affects so many people should have been more explicitly approved by Congress.

It was not the first time the court has suggested that Mr. Biden overstepped his authority, but the case has the potential to curtail Mr. Biden’s ambitions just as newly empowered Republicans in the House have vowed to block his every move in Congress.

During Mr. Biden’s first two years in office, the court has blocked him from enacting key parts of his agenda, including sweeping measures to address climate change, vaccine requirements at large companies and a ban on evictions during the pandemic.

In each case, the court’s conservative majority said the president needed clear congressional approval to pursue such major policies.

The court’s decision on whether to block the student loan program as well, which is likely to come by summer, will have a vast impact on millions of borrowers who have struggled to pay back their loans.

And it will set additional legal precedents, potentially defining new limits for presidential power.

The ruling could have other broad political implications, forcing Mr. Biden and his allies to reshape their efforts to court one of the Democratic Party’s most important constituencies ahead of the 2024 campaign: young people... READ MORE

Father’s return allows children to continue toward college degrees.

A father separated from his family by a Trump administration immigration policy was finally able to return to the U.S. last month, after almost four years.

When José Luis Ruiz Arévalos left the U.S. in May 2019, he thought he would be gone six days. Instead, he was forced to stay out of the country for almost four years. His absence created emotional and financial burdens for his entire family and derailed some of his children’s college plans.

His return, full of joy and tears, lifts a heavy burden on his children and allows them to continue their academic journeys toward college degrees.

“Finally, our struggle of almost four years has come to an end,” said his wife, Armanda Ruiz, in Spanish. “I have the moral support and the economic support I didn’t have, and my daughter who left college can continue her studies.”

The bus carrying Ruiz Arévalos home pulled up in a grocery store parking lot in the small Central Valley city of Los Banos on a cold Friday evening. Waiting anxiously were his wife and their four children, bearing red, white and blue balloons and a handmade sign with the words, “Bienvenido a casa José” and “1,366” – the number of days Ruiz Arévalos was gone.

As he got off the bus, his four children rushed forward to hug him, holding on as long as they could.

“Once I saw him on the bus, I was like, ‘Wow, this is real,’” said Elena Gutiérrez Ramírez, 22. “Everything I hoped that would happen, it happened... READ MORE

Crowded scenes at the border do not necessarily translate into an increase in the undocumented population. Many other immigrants have been returning home.

In August 2021, more than three decades after sneaking across the southern border as young adults to work and support their families in Mexico, Irma and Javier Hernandez checked in at La Guardia Airport for a one-way flight from New York to Oaxaca. They were leaving behind four American children, stable jobs where they were valued employees and a country they had grown to love.

But after years of living in the United States without legal status, the couple had decided it was time to return to their homeland. Ms. Hernandez’s mother was 91, and they feared she might die — as Ms. Hernandez’s father and in-laws did — before they saw each other again. With dollar savings, they had built a little house, where they could live, and had invested in a tortilleria, which they could run. Their children, now young adults, could fend for themselves.

“Only God knows how hard we worked day after day in New York,” said Ms. Hernandez, 57. “We are still young enough that we could have kept going there, but ultimately we made the difficult choice to return.”

The Hernandezes are part of a wave of immigrants who have been leaving the United States and returning to their countries of origin in recent years, often after spending most of their lives toiling as undocumented workers. Some of them never intended to remain in the United States but said that the cost and danger of crossing the border kept them here once they had arrived — and they built lives. Now, middle-aged and still able-bodied, many are making a reverse migration.

Mexicans, who represent the largest and most transformative migration to the United States in modern history, started a gradual return more than a decade ago, with improvements in the Mexican economy and shrinking job opportunities in the United States during the last recession.

But departures have recently accelerated, beginning with crackdowns on immigrants under the Trump administration and continuing under President Biden as many older people decide they have realized their original goals for immigrating and can afford to trade the often-grueling work available to undocumented workers for a slower pace in their home country... READ MORE

This documentary shows the plight of one woman as she tries to reunite with her sons and make a permanent home in the United States.

When news of the Department of Justice’s zero-tolerance policy for unauthorized entry into the United States came out in mid-2018, a group of moms in Queens sprang into action. They created an organization called Immigrant Families Together, aimed at reuniting mothers held at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona with the children taken from them by the government. “Split at the Root” follows one of these women: Rosayra, an asylum seeker from Guatemala who had crossed into the U.S. with her two sons.

The documentary, directed by Linda Goldstein Knowlton, is a heartbreaking reminder of the cruelty of these separations, showing that reunification is often only the beginning of a long journey for the families torn apart.

Rosayra’s path toward gaining asylum shows the Catch 22 many face: One must be in imminent danger to be admitted as a refugee but must also remember to get a police report from the country they were leaving; immigrants must prove they will not be a burden to the country but are not allowed to work. The emotional toll on the families is acute, including inhumane conditions, bureaucratic hurdles and personal trauma. Before Rosayra meets up with her boys in New York City, her teenage son, Yordy, takes charge of his younger brother, Fernando Jose, and in an interview expresses the challenges of becoming a de facto parent at age 15.

“Split at the Root” is a powerful lens into the emotional plight of the thousands of immigrants who cross the border into the United States, the danger they are fleeing and the people trying to help them.

Split at the Root
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix