Week of December 8–14, 2022

Four people have been indicted for human trafficking and other offenses against the United States. The indictment includes charges of human trafficking of individuals from Central America, benefiting from forced labor, money laundering, and various other immigration-related offenses such as harboring undocumented non-citizens. Ana Patricia Landaverde, Jeffrey Dean Vaughan, and George William Evans are accused of engaging in a conspiracy to harbor, transport, and benefit from the employment of undocumented noncitizens at their commercial laundry business, Northstar Holdings of Virginia LLC, d/b/a Magnolia Cleaning Services, LLC. The fourth unnamed defendant is alleged to have acted as an illegal supplier of fraudulent identification documents. The case was investigated by the Hampton Roads Human Trafficking Task Force, a collaboration between federal, state, and local law enforcement and prosecutors, as well as non-governmental organizations, working together to combat human trafficking in the Hampton Roads Region.

A mother of five from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, has been stranded in Mexico for more than a year and can't get back home to her husband and children due to issues with her citizenship. Karen Serrano, 30, is a naturalised US citizen originally from Mexico, but she was told she needs to apply for a visa to come back after returning to Mexico to visit her father, as the government believed she may be trying to remain in the US illegally. Serrano has been stuck in Mexico since October 2021 and has seen her family intermittently since then. Her husband has now set up a Go Fund Me page to help finance living expenses for his family at home and expenses for his wife in Mexico.

A group of House Democrats has called on the Biden administration to recognize asylum as a human right and cease punitive immigration measures. The Dec. 9 letter, led by Democratic Reps. Jesús García, Lou Correa and Adriano Espaillat, and signed by 21 Democrats, warned against replacing the Title 42 policy with other repressive measures, and instead urged a focus on “humane processing.” The court declared the Title 42 policy arbitrary and capricious, giving the Biden administration until Dec. 21 to end its implementation. The administration is appealing that decision. Title 42 allows border officials to deny migrants their right to apply for asylum under the guise of pandemic-related sanitary protections. The Democrats have urged the administration to offer protections to migrants impacted by Title 42, who are overwhelmingly people of color.

House Republicans have introduced legislation that would significantly expand the use of expedited removal to quickly deport illegal immigrants at the southern US border just as the Title 42 authority to remove migrants is set to expire on Dec. 21. The American Safety and Fairness Through Expedited Removal (SAFER) Act, introduced by Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, would rescind the current requirement for use of the process, which is limited to illegal immigrants who are apprehended within 100 miles of the border or who have entered the US within two weeks. The new legislation would also require all illegal immigrants who did not obtain valid entry documents and have been in the US less than two years, to be removed via the authority. The bill has 17 co-sponsors and the backing of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Karen Serrano Roberts, a Mexican national who has lived in the United States for most of her life, has been stranded in Mexico for the last 18 months, separated from her U.S. born husband and five children due to her immigration status. She went to Mexico in July 2021 to apply for a green card at the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, but was barred from returning to the US without an I-601 A waiver for being in the US without documentation. Without the waiver, the law calls for her to wait 10 years before being able to return. Since arriving in Mexico, Roberts has been mostly alone and isolated in a country where she knows few people. Her husband and five children are in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.

US President Joe Biden vowed to "end for-profit detention centers" on his campaign website, but this article argues that private detention facilities, while criticised for profiting from human suffering, offer a cost-effective alternative for holding migrants who are required by federal law to be detained. The Immigration and Nationality Act requires that migrants who enter the US illegally or without proper documents be detained from the moment they are encountered until they are either granted immigration relief or removed. The law also requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain migrants under final orders of removal for a period pending their deportation from the US. Despite these statutory requirements, the number of migrants placed into detention under the Biden administration has dropped. Private facilities are subject to stringent oversight and must comply with the same detention standards as federal facilities. Private detention contractors are also subject to the restrictions of the agency's Performance-Based National Detention Standards 2011, which were crafted with input from many agency employees and stakeholders.

Tampa Bay is a popular destination for immigrants already in the US who want to move, but they may not be thriving there, according to a study by the Bush Institute. The research found that rising housing costs pose a bigger challenge for immigrants than native-born Americans, with most of Florida's metro areas having middle-of-the-pack immigrant incomes but worse-than-average housing costs. The study argues state and local governments should adopt policies that are more welcoming toward immigrants, like partnering with colleges and universities to promote pathways to transfer foreign training and credentials and quality refugee resettlement assistance. It also calls on Congress to pass federal legislation that would expand pathways for foreign workers. Immigration is critical for population and economic growth in the US and will be more so as the US population continues to age.

The Denver Gazette has published an editorial arguing that the city's welcoming of illegal immigrants has led to the release of criminals into the community. The newspaper notes that Denver became a sanctuary city in 2014 and has codified its status as such in an ordinance that prohibits city employees from collecting information on immigration or citizenship status. The editorial claims that the policy has led to an increase in crime and that local authorities have released criminals in defiance of federal immigration detainers. The paper suggests that other states and cities, including those along the southern border, are now transporting immigrants to Denver, which it says asked for this to happen by declaring itself a sanctuary city. The paper argues that Denver's politicians cannot now complain about the arrival of immigrants as they have "signaled their virtue" by welcoming them.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced plans to clear a backlog of 150,000 asylum-seeker applications by the end of 2023 and to introduce legislation to prevent those who arrive in the UK illegally from remaining in the country. The announcement follows mounting pressure on the government to tackle the growing number of people arriving in the UK via small boats across the English Channel. Sunak’s proposals include doubling the number of caseworkers, fast tracking the return of Albanian asylum seekers and creating a new unit to tackle crossings. He also suggested that asylum seekers would be housed in disused holiday parks, former student accommodation and surplus military sites, rather than hotels. The plans have been criticised by the UN refugee agency for undermining the global refugee system and breaching international refugee law.

Venezuelans have left their country due to an economic and political crisis, not because of US border policies, says Harvard’s Ricardo Hausmann. Hausmann notes that Venezuela’s situation is unique, as it is the only country to have engineered a GDP decline of 80% during peacetime, which he attributes to the government taking away economic rights, resulting in people leaving the country. Over seven million refugees and migrants have left Venezuela, with most in Latin America. While the US has established a parole program for Venezuelans, which some human rights activists oppose, Hausmann believes more open policies could benefit Venezuelan refugees and the US economy, which he describes as having an overheated economy with twice as many vacancies as people looking for jobs.