Gabe Ortiz

First lady Jill Biden told young undocumented immigrant graduates during a commencement speech this week that she feels “inspired” by them, saying that while the road ahead “will be both heartbreaking and hopeful,” she believed “the inner strength that got you here will serve you well,” the Associated Press (AP) reported.

The first lady made the remarks during a virtual commencement ceremony organized by TheDream.

The Oregon fund for undocumented workers excluded from federal pandemic relief due to their legal status has distributed more than $60 million in survival checks to over 37,000 people in the state, The Oregonian reports. Advocates said money has gone to excluded workers in nearly every county, the majority of them workers in either agriculture or food processing.

Following a shocking NBC News report last week that a number of unaccompanied migrant children were stranded in vans overnight—one child reportedly for several days—while waiting to be transferred to sponsors, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra has pledged an investigation into the allegations, The Washington Post reports.

“This is completely unacceptable,” Becerra said in the report.

Alejandra Juarez returned home just in time to celebrate Mother’s Day with her family. Cruelly targeted for deportation by the previous administration despite being a military spouse and having no criminal record, the mother of two U.S. citizens returned home on Saturday after being granted humanitarian parole by the Biden administration.

Farmworkers in Washington state will now have the right to overtime pay, following Gov. Jay Inslee’s signature of a new law on Tuesday. United Farm Workers (UFW), among the advocates that championed the the Tomás Villanueva Overtime Protection Bill, said the state is now only the second in the nation “to remove the racist exclusion of farm workers from national overtime pay laws.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors has approved a one-year, $5 million pilot program that will provide legal assistance to immigrants detained at nearby Otay Mesa Detention Facility, the Associated Press (AP) reports. Unlike in the criminal court system, people facing immigration court aren’t guaranteed legal help, no matter how vulnerable—or young—they might be.

Alejandra Juarez, the undocumented military spouse cruelly deported by the previous president despite outcries from legislators and advocates, will soon be returning home to the United States. Orlando Sentinel reports that the Biden administration has granted the mother of two U.S. citizen daughters humanitarian parole.

“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” Juarez told the Sentinel.

Dozens of groups, including organizations that advocate for Venezuelan immigrants, are calling on Florida Republicans Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to support legislation reintroduced to the Senate earlier this year that would put Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients onto a path to legalization and citizenship.

Immigrants and allies who are three weeks into a hunger strike urging New Jersey leaders to act on a pandemic relief fund for excluded workers can now count a legendary labor leader and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate as some of their most recent supporters.

Nearly four years ago, Juana Luz Tobar Ortega became the first undocumented immigrant in North Carolina to publicly go into sanctuary under the previous administration. Nearly four years later, Tobar Ortega has been able to go home due to new Biden administration priorities, last week becoming the last undocumented immigrant in the state to leave sanctuary.

Karina Silvotti, an essential worker in New Jersey, said she’s “worried night and day” about what would happen if she gets sick while on the job as a cashier at a grocery store. Karina lacks legal status, so she’s ineligible for federal relief despite paying into the system through her tax dollars. Those fears only escalated when her husband lost his construction work job during the pandemic.

The Biden administration had until April 2 to decide whether or not it would disclose documents relating to the previous administration’s family separation policy, including from a reported White House meeting where former aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller and other officials from that administration allegedly voted on the policy of state-sanctioned kidnapping.

President Joe Biden on Friday released an initial budget request to Congress that will seek funds to address his administration’s new priorities within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The number of people locked up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention is right now at its lowest in two decades. That’s a good thing. But due to very lucrative agreements, private prisons contracted by the federal government to detain immigrants are getting paid for thousands of empty beds anyway. “At the median rate of $75 per bed, the estimated daily cost to taxpayers for these empty beds is $1.34 million per day,” NPR reports.

In the earliest weeks of the novel coronavirus pandemic last year, people jailed at a private immigration prison in Arizona held a peaceful protest over the lack of sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) provided to detainees. The facility responded to their pleas by violently deploying chemical agents at them, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General said in a new report released Thursday.

An asylum-seeker who was in sanctuary at an Ohio church for more than three years and was finally able to return to her home and community last month is calling on President Joe Biden to rescind the outrageous fines levied on her by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in what advocates have said is an intimidation tactic against undocumented immigrants who have gone into sanctuary.

After being waitlisted, Southern California resident Sebastian Araujo’s mom immediately snatched up a COVID-19 vaccine appointment as soon as a slot had opened up. But Araujo said in a viral Twitter thread that got the attention of local and national outlets that his mom, Graciela, who is undocumented, was rejected at the drug store chain where she had been scheduled to get her shot.

California public health officials say that people in federal immigration detention in facilities located in the state will now be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, KQED reports.

Efforts to vaccinate California’s farmworkers against COVID-19 continue to expand in the state, Border Report said. In San Diego County, strawberry field laborers were the first farmworkers in the region to get their first dose, thanks to mobile clinics that are going to straight to workers. It’s an effort being seen in agricultural areas all over the state.

The end of the inhumane detention of asylum-seeking families could be a step closer to becoming reality. NBC News reports that the Biden administration said that the migrant family jail in Pennsylvania will no longer detain parents and children, while the two migrant family jails in Texas will not detain families past 72 hours. There had been reports on both of these changes within the past several days. The administration officially announced it in court documents on Friday.

The end of the inhumane detention of asylum-seeking families could be a step closer to becoming reality. NBC News reports that the Biden administration said that the migrant family jail in Pennsylvania will no longer detain parents and children, while the two migrant family jails in Texas will not detain families past 72 hours. There had been reports on both of these changes within the past several days. The administration officially announced it in court documents on Friday.

The Supreme Court on Friday granted a request from the Biden administration to dismiss several cases around the previous administration’s withholding of federal funds from so-called “sanctuary cities.” Punishing localities for pro-immigrant policies was a favorite pastime of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III since the beginning of the previous administration.

Nearly 70 indigenous rights, wildlife, and civil rights groups are calling on the Biden administration to tear down nearly 60 miles of border fencing erected by the previous administration in Arizona, as well as some fencing along other regions of the border.

California is releasing tens of millions in funds to assist newly arrived asylum-seekers with food and transportation as they travel to sponsors, the Associated Press reports. The $28 million will go to San Diego Rapid Response Network member Jewish Family Service, and comes as the Biden administration is allowing into the U.S. a number of families blocked by the previous administration’s anti-asylum policy.

The Biden administration will allow officials to bypass policy that required relatives and other sponsors to have to pay for the flights of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in U.S. custody, the Associated Press (AP) reports. Government policy has typically required sponsors to have to pay for the transportation costs of children they’ve agreed to care for.

The federal judge who last month temporarily halted the Biden administration’s 100-day moratorium on most deportations following a lawsuit from Texas’ very-corrupt Republican attorney general has extended that pause “indefinitely,” the Associated Press reports. That initial hold from U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, who was appointed by the previous administration, was set to expire Tuesday. It’s now extended indefinitely.

For several election cycles now, voters across the country have ousted sheriffs who’ve collaborated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the flawed and racist 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents. In just one example last month, South Carolina Sheriff Kristin Graziano terminated the agreement on her first day in office, calling it “legal racial profiling.

For more than three years, asylum-seeker Edith Espinal has been in sanctuary at Columbus Mennonite Church in Ohio. She’d lived in the state for 20 years. She has no criminal record. She’d been checking in regularly with the government. But in October 2017, she was forced to go into sanctuary after becoming a priority for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

That church has been her home since.

President Joe Biden on day one terminated the so-called “national emergency” his predecessor declared as an excuse to build his border wall, ordering a halt to construction “as soon as possible but in no case later than seven days” while his administration reassessed the legality of the project.

In 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives under Democratic leadership passed landmark LGBTQ rights legislation that would go on to become one of the hundreds (yes, hundreds, here’s a full list courtesy of Daily Kos’ Meteor Blades) of bills blocked by Senate Republicans.