Gabe Ortiz

Domestic workers continue to struggle with joblessness more than a year into the novel coronavirus pandemic, new findings reveal. The survey, conducted by La Alianza for National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) Labs, reached Spanish-speaking domestic workers over the course of July and found that nearly 30% of respondents reported a week with zero hours worked that month. That number increased compared to findings from May and June.

Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown and Alex Padilla are leading a call urging the Labor Department to establish a much-needed permanent federal heat stress standard. Legislators say that the department had previously announced it was adding it to the spring agenda. But as record summer heat has contributed to the deaths of farmworkers, senators say the danger facing workers is “at a pressure point.

Families forcibly separated at the southern border by the previous administration have already experienced trauma on top of trauma. Being ripped apart without so much as a chance to say goodbye. The months—often years—of separation. The danger that caused them to flee their homes in the first place.

Back in 2019, Illinois became first in the nation to ban private immigration detention facilities. Now, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed into law further legislation that effectively ends immigration detention in the state. The Illinois Way Forward Act mandates local jails end their contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by next year, and prohibits the renewal of any existing agreements.

The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Ur Jaddou, a daughter of Mexican and Iraqi immigrants, becomes the first woman to head the agency, and its first Senate-confirmed director in more than two years, Roll Call reports.

The U.S. House of Representatives by an overwhelming vote of 407-16 passed bipartisan legislation that authorizes thousands more special visas for Afghan allies, and speeds up the application process. The ALLIES Act, introduced by the Honoring Our Promises Working Group last month, increases the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) cap by 8,000 visas, among a number of important provisions.

The official version of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog report obtained by BuzzFeed News last month confirms that officials at a privately operated prison failed to provide sufficient medical attention to an immigrant experiencing chest and arm pain. While 51-year-old Anthony Jones was given medication (reportedly aspirin) and an electrocardiogram, he was not sent to a hospital.

The mainstream media has a big anti-immigrant problem. Following President Joe Biden unveiling his immigration overhaul package earlier this year, a number of major outlets quoted extremist groups on the proposal as if these organizations held any legitimacy. In one example, Media Matters found that NPR quoted or cited the groups in three different instances during a two-day period.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday restored the ability for immigration judges to press pause on the certain deportations, including cases considered low priority or where an immigrant has a petition pending and shouldn’t be deported while that’s decided. The decision, which reverses policy by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, could significantly slash the immigration backlog, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said.

Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois is again leading a call urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to end the detention of transgender people and people with HIV. A letter, addressed to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Alejandro Mayorakas and acting ICE Director Tae Johnson, is signed by a number of progressive champions and joined by nearly 70 organizations.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has long been considered one of the most corrupt federal bodies in the nation, with a government commissioned report in 2015 noting that “arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed, on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies,” ProPublica reported in 2019. The department nevertheless continues to get billions upon billions in funding from Congress every single year.

You might remember how back in 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) infamously shut down a free hotline for detained people seeking legal help after it was featured in an episode of the Emmy-winning Netflix series, Orange Is the New Black? The hotline had been in service for years and fielded thousands of calls monthly, but within two weeks of the season’s premiere, ICE shut it down.

The Biden administration on Friday unveiled policy limiting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention of pregnant individuals, stating that federal immigration officials will not detain pregnant immigrants “unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.” While advocates called the administration’s policy a step in the right direction, they remained cautious.

The private contractor managing the Fort Bliss prison camp near El Paso, Texas, is a fire and water damage repair company with absolutely zero experience in child welfare, two federal workers who volunteered there have revealed in a shocking whistleblower report. The document, released by a whistleblower advocacy organization, comes just weeks after nearly 20 children revealed disturbing conditions at the unlicensed camp.

Farmworkers were among the essential workers honored at the White House’s July 4 celebration this past weekend. United Farm Workers (UFW) said that the two families, from Georgia and Washington, represented the nation’s nearly 2.5 million farmworkers. More than a million lack legal status, and the families used the platform to urge leaders to pass permanent relief for farmworkers everywhere.

Hundreds of families who live on opposite sides of the southern border got to embrace last month—but for just a few precious moments. Roughly 200 families reunited at the Rio Grande as part of the annual Hugs Not Walls day, when officials briefly allow families “from both sides of the river with no legal means to reunite to reconnect for a brief embrace in the middle of the Rio Grande,” El Paso Matters reported.

Detained immigrants and their advocates have said since the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) isn’t taking this virus seriously (or just doesn’t really care to). For example, ICE’s refusal to release immigrants to shelter at home and in their communities added hundreds of thousands of cases to the national caseload.

Julia Preston reports that the Biden administration has, “with little public fanfare,” been planning a review process that could set the stage for returning to the U.S. some immigrants unjustly deported by the previous administration. While President Joe Biden announced a review of military deportations after taking office (some already have been allowed to return), this expanded review could mean reunification for many others.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis on Friday signed into law a sweeping bill expanding the rights of Colorado’s farmworkers, including minimum wage and overtime benefits. For nearly a century now, many farmworkers have been intentionally excluded from basic protections. This legislation now begins to correct this injustice for farmworkers in the state.

BuzzFeed News has obtained an as-of-yet unpublished inspector general report finding that an immigrant who had been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody for more than a year died of a heart attack when the privately operated facility he had been held at failed to get him to a hospital for proper medical attention. Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, is operated by private prison profiteer CoreCivic.

In a major blow to farmworkers and labor rights, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against the ability of union organizers in California to access agricultural worksites to speak to laborers, The New York Times reports. The high court ruled along political lines, with all six right-wing justices ruling against unions and farmworkers. Growers had lost in the lower courts.

“Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Internal documents obtained by a government watchdog continue to confirm that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was knowingly worsening the novel coronavirus pandemic. It wasn’t just that the agency refused to release larger numbers of immigrants and worsened this public health crisis here at home. The agency was also knowingly deporting sick immigrants, helping spread and worsen the pandemic abroad.

Putting the nation’s undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship would provide a massive boost to the nation’s economy, increasing the gross domestic product by up to $1.7 trillion over the next decade and creating over 430,000 jobs, the Center for American Progress and the University of California, Davis’ Global Migration Center said in new findings released this week.

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders and their allies rallied in a number of U.S. cities on Thursday to call on federal lawmakers to enact a pathway to citizenship through the budget reconciliation process. This national day of action by members of the National TPS Alliance comes just days after a devastating, unanimous Supreme Court decision that stands to make it harder for immigrants to gain residency.

The nonprofit group tasked by a federal court with connecting asylum-seeking parents and children ripped apart at the southern border by the previous administration with free mental health services said it has reached over 1,000 families and counting, NBC News reports.

Due to the pandemic, Seneca Family of Agencies has had to do many searches virtually.

A leading immigrant rights advocacy group has filed a complaint on behalf of two women alleging unsafe, dangerous conditions while in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at an Indiana facility. They cite crowded conditions amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, guards who won’t wear masks, and insufficient soap to keep themselves safe. One of the women was tested for the virus while detained, but said that officials wouldn’t give her the result.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott isn’t remotely close to finished when it comes to using vulnerable asylum-seeking children as his political pawns. Just weeks after being called out on Fox News of all places for his silence during the past four years of anti-immigrant abuses under the previous president, Abbott has ordered that state facilities that hold unaccompanied children until they can be safely placed with a sponsor to shut down, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Nearly 120 local and national organizations, including African Communities Together and U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, are calling for an 18-month extension and redesignation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalia.

The Biden administration has formally ended the previous administration’s anti-asylum Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy, which forced tens of thousands of asylum-seekers and their families to wait for their U.S. immigration court dates in dangerous regions of Mexico for as long as two years, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees on Thursday issued a public statement calling on the Biden administration to end the Stephen Miller-pushed policy that’s used the pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers. The policy, implemented last year under political pressure from Miller and former Vice President Mike Pence, has deported more than 600,000 asylum-seekers.