Once These Legal Immigrants Turn 21, They Face Deportation

“Fedora Castelino left India when she was only four months old, eventually settling in the United States at the age of six as a dependent on her father’s H-1B visa. Now almost 19, she’s staring down a deadline: In just two years, she might have to deport herself.

Castelino is one of over 200,000 “Documented Dreamers,” dependent visa holders who were brought to the U.S. legally as children and have resided here lawfully since. If they can’t secure a work visa or sponsorship for a green card before turning 21—a process made far more difficult by extreme application backlogs and wait times—they’re forced to self-deport. “It’s so hard to realize that I’ve lived here basically my entire life—this is actually not my home,” says Castelino. “Even after finishing all my schooling in America, I’m still not in a home country, which is really hard to accept.”

“These are individuals who’ve essentially been raised and educated here,” says Dip Patel, founder of Improve the Dream, which advocates for Documented Dreamers. “This is typically the only place they’ve known.” According to a survey conducted by Patel’s organization, Documented Dreamers were, on average, just five years old when they came to the United States.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, introduced by the Obama administration, shields undocumented “Dreamers” from deportation. Around 650,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children through no fault of their own are protected. But Documented Dreamers have received comparatively little attention from politicians.”

Biden Is Deporting Venezuelans to Colombia

“Record numbers of Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the United States from Mexico in recent months, hoping to apply for asylum. U.S. immigration authorities reported 24,819 Venezuelan border crossers in December 2021, compared to just 200 one year prior.

Despite the compelling case many Venezuelans have for seeking refuge in the U.S., the Biden administration is denying many of them that opportunity. Instead it is quietly deporting them to Colombia—a policy that resembles a controversial Trump administration practice.”

” In March 2021, Biden’s DHS announced an 18-month “temporary protected status” for Venezuelans already present in the U.S. That designation, which protects migrants from expulsion, is reserved for people fleeing an “ongoing armed conflict,” “an environmental disaster, or an epidemic,” or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” The designation applies to 320,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. but excludes newcomers, despite the Biden administration’s explicit recognition that America should be a safe haven.”

Biden is trying to rein in ICE with new immigration enforcement priorities

“Among President Joe Biden’s key campaign promises on immigration was to end Trump-era policies that threatened all undocumented immigrants with deportation and to identify new priorities for enforcement that protect families, workers, and longtime residents. New guidance issued Thursday is a step toward fulfilling that promise, but it still leaves individual immigration enforcement officers with significant decision-making power.

According to a memo from acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tae Johnson, the agency will now prioritize people who pose a threat to national security or public safety for deportation, as well as recent arrivals. Specifically, that includes those who have engaged in terrorism or espionage or are suspected of doing so, people over the age of 16 who are members of criminal gangs and transnational criminal organizations, and people who arrived in the US after November 1, 2020. People who were apprehended while trying to cross the border without authorization at any point, even before November 1, are also being targeted.

The memo doesn’t make people with criminal records into automatic enforcement targets, but it does prioritize those convicted of certain offenses classified as “aggravated felonies” — which can include filing a false tax return or failing to appear in court. While those crimes might appear relatively minor, the Obama administration’s deportation guidance targeted people with just a single “significant misdemeanor.”

The memo represents a departure from Trump-era policies in which any immigrant — regardless of whether they had committed crimes or how long they had resided in the US — could have been targeted by ICE, sometimes in wide-scale raids. But it’s less clear whether the memo will allow the Biden administration to meaningfully advance from the Obama-era status quo on immigration enforcement, in which “felons, not families” were supposed to be deported as part of reforms that ICE largely ignored.”

““Despite what some critics may claim, this memo does not block immigration enforcement, but rather makes very clear that ICE officers retain discretion and that no one is completely off limits from apprehension, detention, or removal,””

Biden will pause deportations for 100 days

“The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday night that it would pause deportations of certain noncitizens for 100 days starting on January 22”

“Given that immigration enforcement agencies have limited resources, presidents typically identify what classes of immigrants should be prioritized for deportation. Under former President Barack Obama, that included people who posed a threat to national security, immigrants convicted of serious crimes, and recent border crossers.
Trump essentially eliminated those priorities. The moratorium is supposed to give Biden a chance to reevaluate where the immigration agencies should dedicate their resources.”

“Noncitizens can still be deported if they have engaged in terrorism or espionage or are suspected of doing so, or if they otherwise pose a threat to national security. The head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement can also intervene in an individual case to order their deportation.”

No, 1 in 3 Kids Coming Across the Southern Border Are Not Victims of Sex Trafficking

“In a recent short video for PragerU, Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican running for Congress in Florida, suggested that one third of the immigrant kids coming over our southern border are being sex trafficked.
She said it in a kind of garbled way—conflating the fact that some kids aren’t related to their smugglers, with the fact that “sex trafficking exists”—but her conclusion was clear: Separating kids from the adults bringing them over the border is for their own protection, because otherwise they are being sold into prostitution.

This notion is preposterous”

“in 2018, the government started doing DNA tests on a limited group of people crossing the border who had aroused particular suspicion. “It wasn’t a random sample of people coming over the border,” she says.

Indeed, many of them were not related to the people they said were their relatives. But that was only a small subset of migrants, and the results were neither surprising nor damning. Unrelated groups often cross the border together, because many times the biological parent is already in the U.S. They left their child behind to be raised by an aunt or grandma until the child was old enough to come over, or the parent was well-established enough to provide them a decent home. The parent then pays for the child’s passage north. Maybe the child is accompanied by an aunt, or even a neighbor who is also migrating. This person might lie about their relationship to the child, but that doesn’t mean their true purpose is sex trafficking.”

“In any case, the government has currently come up with a new excuse for separating children and sending them back across the border: COVID-19. The New York Times reported Wednesday that the feds are deporting hundreds of migrant kids and teens without any chance to plead their case. The government is citing a 1944 law that lists disease-prevention as a reason to bar foreigners from entering the country, but many of these kids were already here when the pandemic began.”