“Guan Heng is a former resident of China who did something amazing: He defied the country’s authoritarian government and documented the abuses of Uyghur Muslims.
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A few months ago, in August, ICE detained him after he admitted he had initially entered the country illegally. Immigration authorities would now like to deport him, either to Uganda—where he would likely be taken back to China—or to China directly.”
“While the administration stokes fear about Afghan immigrants, data paint another picture. A 2019 study from the Cato Institute showed that the incarceration rate for Afghans between 18 and 54 was 127 per 100,000, a stark comparison to the 1,477 per 100,000 for native-born Americans.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that, according to a 2024 Department of Health and Human Services study, refugees brought a $123.8 billion net fiscal benefit to the U.S. between 2005 and 2019, contributing $581 billion in taxes while receiving $457.1 billion in government support. This combats the Trump administration’s objections based on the net cost of admitting refugees to the U.S.
While refugees’ earnings may be limited on arrival, IRC says they “increase significantly” with time. A median household income of $30,500 in a refugee’s first five years in the U.S. becomes a median income of $71,400 after being here for 20 years. That number exceeds the national median income by nearly $4,000.
IRC also reported that more refugees become entrepreneurs (13 percent) than their U.S.-born counterparts (9 percent), benefitting their communities.
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The administration is using an isolated act of violence to justify sweeping crackdowns on refugees and wartime allies who were already thoroughly vetted.”
“Trump has halted all asylum decisions and paused visas for Afghan passport holders. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has announced that the government is “actively re-examining” all Afghan nationals who entered the country under President Joseph Biden. CBS reports that the administration is thinking of expanding its travel ban from 19 to 30 countries.
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New data leaked to and analyzed by David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, show that of the people taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since October 1, 73 percent had no criminal conviction. Nearly half had no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges; about a quarter had no conviction but did have pending charges. Of those with a criminal conviction, the majority had vice, immigration, or traffic violations. Only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction.
Since January, the number of individuals arrested by ICE without a criminal record or criminal charge has grown by 1,500 percent.
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Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals have migrated to the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome and its successor, Operation Enduring Welcome—programs designed to resettle Afghans who aided the U.S. during the two-decade Afghanistan War. Another 260,000 Afghans are still waiting to come to the U.S., according to Shawn VanDiver, the president of #AfghanEvac and a proponent of the Afghan refugee programs.
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Sharif Aly, president of the International Refugee Assistance Project, told the Associated Press that refugees are “already the most highly vetted immigrants in the United States.” Revetting and reinterviewing the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees peacefully living in the U.S. is not only cruel, Aly argues, but a “tremendous waste of government resources.”
Unfortunately, legal limbo is nothing new for Afghan refugees. Many of them legitimately fear for their lives if they return to Afghanistan after aiding the U.S. Now they face an even more uncertain future.”
“He had a valid work permit and a pending asylum claim, but Ihsanullah Garay was still detained. He now faces deportation while battling brain cancer.”
“M.A.R. is just one of “hundreds of thousands of noncitizens…paroled into the United States in recent years after inspection at a port of entry and who now face the threat of removal under highly truncated procedures that have rarely, if ever, been applied at any scale to parolees””
“Family and friends of a Venezuelan migrant living in Texas say officials sent him to an El Salvador mega-prison because he had an autism awareness tattoo.
Neri Jose Alvarado Borges was one of the hundreds of men deported by immigration authorities on March 15 to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, one of the most dangerous prisons in the world, his friends and family told NBC Dallas Fort Worth on Monday.
Borges has a tattoo that features a rainbow-colored ribbon composed of puzzle pieces, a symbol for autism awareness, along with the name of Borges’s autistic brother, according to the local outlet.”
“Rojas, 42, is one of potentially hundreds of people who have been detained in recent weeks despite complying with Ice requirements to regularly check-in. Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian has estimated, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests – 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.
Lawyers and immigration advocates told the Guardian they believe that in order to oblige the president’s demand for mass arrests and deportation, immigration officials are reaching for the “low-hanging fruit” – people that Ice had previously released from custody while they pursued asylum or other immigration cases in a backlogged immigration court system.”
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“In Rojas’s case, he was allowed to stay in Spokane with his wife and children – who had pending asylum cases – and apply yearly for a permit to legally work.”
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“Both men had participated in Nicaragua’s April rebellion of 2018, a movement that started among university students. The movement was incited by unpopular changes to the social security system, but quickly grew into a massive movement calling for democratic reforms.
Government forces immediately responded with crushing brutality, shooting at young protesters. “I felt a lot of pain, sadness to see mothers crying for their children,” Rojas said. He felt called to join the cause.”