Archives for August 2020

SHOW THEM YOU’RE GOOD
A Portrait of Boys in the City of Angels the Year Before College
By Jeff Hobbs

Immigration narratives are often only about the journey, but what happens when a migrant arrives at his or her destination? And what happens to his or her children after they’ve been there a while and grown-up? That’s the story Jeff Hobbs tells in “Show Them You’re Good,” a portrait of four exceedingly bright and ambitious Central American and Mexican-American high school seniors in California who find themselves after years of straight A’s and stellar extracurriculars hoping to gain admission to Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, and other top-tier colleges.

It’s senior year, 2016. For Carlos, the most promising of the group, Trump’s presidential victory two months into the school year is particularly worrisome; unlike his friends, he’s undocumented, an applicant for DACA, and the possibility of deportation threatens to destroy his shot at the American dream.

The boys attend Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School in Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest school district, in a city that ranks fifth from last in spending per pupil.

They live in Compton, surrounded by neighborhood gangbangers and I.C.E. agents, of whom they live in fear; their parent’s clean houses or drink too much or struggle to support their families on meager wages. But the boys are harder to pin down, fresher as types, and their stories, Hobbs writes, “represented exactly the immigrant narrative that had been celebrated through generations as central to American ideals — except that this narrative was neither celebrated nor idealized when the flesh of its central characters was not white.”

Carlos, whose older brother (likewise undocumented) received a full scholarship to Yale, studies all night after school in his family’s cluttered illegal shack in another family’s backyard. Tio is a skateboarder and prom king with a 4.0 G.P.A. Luis and Byron take A.P. courses, play pranks, and aspire to be engineers.

Immigrant youth, especially undocumented students and so-called Dreamers, have been shoved around as political pawns, alternately lionized and vilified, but we don’t have much in-depth, nuanced reporting about who these youth really are, how they think and live, how they navigate and interact with American institutions beyond border walls and detention camps.

This has started to change in recent years, most notably with Eileen Truax’s “Dreamers” (2015), an oral history of DACA youth, and with memoirs by undocumented writers like Jose Antonio Vargas’s “Dear America” and Marcello Castillo’s “Children of the Land.”

Hobbs’s carefully observed journalistic account, written with the detached intimacy of ethnography and reported over a year and hundreds of hours spent watching and interviewing his subjects in class, at dances, sporting events, assemblies, homecomings, proms, graduations and in the students’ homes, helps flesh out this larger body of work with an empathetic but objective eye, and in so doing widens our view of the modern “immigrant experience” to include that classic crucible: high school and college admissions, specifically, the experience of first-generation overachievers and the unique challenges they face in this regard.

As Tio explains, when he and other students across Los Angeles organize a walkout in protest of Trump’s presidential victory, kids like him must “stay together and say what we know to be true about us.”

Curiously, the book also follows five students at Beverly Hills High School, 22 miles across the city from Compton and one of the wealthiest districts in the country. The Beverly Hills students mostly don’t have to worry about money, or the law, and suffer a more tedious form of ennui and anxiety, like that experienced by Owen, son of a very wealthy Hollywood writer and former actress, who “felt spoiled, a little undeserving, as if he’d been born to parents so intelligent and caring that they’d deprived him of the rite of stumbling clumsily through youth’s travails, as most kids did, knocking into chairs and corners, gaining wisdom from poor choices.”

Hobbs contrasts the experiences of the two groups of boys and is interested in how both groups struggle to carve out lives from the expectations prompted by their origins — the Latinos slandered by Trump as “bad hombres” and “rapists,” the Beverly Hills kids resented by Middle America as spoiled brats. But his attempt to link their senior-year struggles through the supposed “stigma” that results from their origins feels facile and ignores meatier discussions of race or class that would better illuminate the boys’ two worlds — and the gulfs between them. The inclusion of the Beverly Hills students makes the narrative feel unbalanced, especially given the wildly lower stakes of their challenges compared with those of their peers in Compton, and by the end of the book, one doesn’t have a much greater understanding of the factors that structure the lives of both groups of boys, nor, really, why some have succeeded while others failed.

Upon graduation, the Beverly Hills students go off to top tier colleges where the most privileged among them “didn’t have to factor money into [their] decisions at all.”

In Compton, Byron doesn’t get into any four-year school and must choose between work and the military; Luis goes to the University of California at Santa Barbara; Tio is heartbroken that, despite his 4.0 G.P.A. and extracurriculars, he’s denied acceptance to every school except the less prestigious U.C. Riverside, where he’ll study agricultural science.

Carlos, meanwhile, achieves the near-impossible, gaining the right to a two-year legal stay in the United States as a DACA recipient and earning a full ride to Yale even while his family is evicted from their illegal home.

Hobbs celebrates Carlos’s victory as “the completion of some fantastical cycle by which his parents had come here together, alone and moneyless and without the faintest inkling of prospects, and now, almost 20 years later … the sons they’d brought with them might both attend Yale University — together.”

Readers of Hobbs’s last book, “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” — about his former roommate at Yale, a Black student who can’t disentangle himself from his roots in Newark and is ultimately killed in a drug deal — will know that the value of getting into an Ivy League school, absent relief from broader systemic racism and economic disadvantage, is often dubious.

Oddly, Hobbs’s subjects seem to understand this better than Hobbs himself. We learn in the epilogue of “Show Them You’re Good” that at Yale, Carlos becomes an outspoken critic of what he sees as the unfair treatment of undocumented and poor students on campus, and he’s criticized in turn for being “ungrateful.”

Tio, meanwhile, feels betrayed by his ambitions, by the “encouragement” that “had brought him to override his own cynicism, layered over 18 years of life, about the idea that a system that had rarely worked in favor of people who looked like him might have begun to change. That it had in fact changed for Carlos, Luis, his girlfriend, and others in the hallways at school, but it hadn’t for him, further concentrated his melancholy.”

As deportations of undocumented young people increase, as thousands of migrant children end up in cages and as President Trump disparages Latinos whenever it’s politically useful, readers aren’t likely to be convinced by Hobbs’s broader suggestion that the American dream, that “fantastical cycle,” has simply been picked up and revived by the newest generation of ambitious immigrant youth like Carlos, Tio, Luis, and Byron.

But despite the book’s perhaps unfounded optimism and the baffling juxtaposition between Compton and Beverly Hills, “Show Them You’re Good” is an admirable addition to the growing body of literature that humanizes the struggles and expands the scope of our understanding of the lives of immigrant youth at a time when they’re under near-constant threat of dehumanization.

By Wes Enzinna

 

Source: The Future Looks Very Different on Opposite Sides of Los Angeles

Immigration Nation, a six-episode docuseries that provides a rare view of the internal workings of immigration enforcement—and its impact on individuals and families—began streaming on Netflix in August. The series provides a unique, up-close look at U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) operations in communities from 2017 to 2020 and the real-life impact of our draconian approach to immigration enforcement.

While ICE agreed to allow the producers of the series to film its operations, the agency attempted to delay the film’s release after viewing the final product until after the 2020 presidential election. Trump administration officials even threatened to sue to block parts of the film from airing altogether. The film serves as an indictment of our approach to immigration enforcement and the executive branch’s unchecked authority in regulating immigration in the United States.

These are the stories ICE tried to cover up.

The U.S. Continues to Separate Immigrant Families

The series covers the Trump administration’s 2018 family separation policy that was carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection—an agency with a long and documented history of impunity.

From detention, a father named Josue recounts when U.S. Customs and Border Protection dragged his screaming 3-year-old son away from him.

Emilio, a Guatemalan in his early teens, displays behavioral issues at school as he struggles to adapt to living with his aunt after being separated from his now-detained father at the border.

Children who are suddenly separated from a parent are at greater risk of developing chronic mental health or serious physical conditions.

While the Trump administration has claimed that it has brought an end to family separation, the docuseries demonstrates that our immigration enforcement policies routinely lead to the separation of families.

4.1 million U.S. citizen children under the age of 18 live with at least one undocumented parent.The filmmakers document how our enforcement policies routinely lead to the separation of these families. Approximately half-a-million have experienced the deportation of at least one parent.

The U.S. Deports Veterans of Its Own Military

The series also documents how the United States  has and continues to deport military veterans, including those who have served in combat. Noncitizens who serve in our military are often unaware that non-violent criminal histories can make them deportable. Last year, the Government Accountability Office revealed that ICE was not following procedures intended to minimize these deportations.

Once deported, veterans may be unable to access benefits they earned while serving, like disability or retirement pay. The series documents the struggle of a man named César, a former Marine, who put his life on the line for our country. only to be deported for a nonviolent drug offense. His only potential avenue of relief is a pardon from the Governor of New Mexico.

Creating Barriers to Family Reunification

The series also highlights the story of a woman named Deborah from Uganda who was attacked with acid by men sent by her ex-husband. While she was fortunate to be resettled in the United States  as a refugee, the film documents her desperate five-year wait to be reunited with her children.

Over the past four years, the Trump administration has slashed the refugee cap from 110,000 spots to 18,000. This year, the government is on track to leave thousands of those reduced spots empty.

Deterrence at All Costs

Perhaps most devastating are the stories of families who the immigration system separates permanently.

The final episode focuses on a policy known as prevention through deterrence, a strategy the United States has pursued since the 1990s. The tactic uses barriers, agents, and technology to prevent immigrants  from crossing the border in safer areas. It forces them deep into dangerous terrain like the Sonoran desert. This often leads to death through exposure.

The filmmakers spoke with staff of the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office in Arizona about the over 7,000 bodies found on the U.S.-Mexico border since 1998.

The series also follows Camerina in her years-long search for the remains of her son. Her story highlights the difficulty in identifying, or even finding, remains of a person who dies in the desert. Over 3,000 people who have been reported missing have not been identified.

The Fight Continues

The series also documents the way that communities in the U.S. have challenged immigration enforcement practices, with an emphasis on state and local collaboration with the federal government.

Citizens of Charlotte, North Carolina fought t back against their police department’s collaboration with ICE through a 287(g) agreement. This program allows the Department of Homeland Security to deputize state or local law enforcement officers to perform the functions of federal immigration agents. This allows any interaction with law enforcement, including a traffic violation, to turn into potential deportation and can lead to bias-based policing.

It is important to remember that these heartbreaking stories are a part of daily life for real people across the United States. Those portrayed in Immigration Nation share an intimate, vulnerable view of some of the most painful moments of their lives. We must honor them by continuing to fight the policies that cause that pain. It is time to reimagine our approach to immigration enforcement.

Source: The Stories From Immigration Nation ICE Didn’t Want You to See

 

The Trump administration is planning a sharp increase in the cost of naturalization this fall. Critics say it is part of a pattern intended to discourage immigration from poor nations.

 

WASHINGTON — When Guadalupe Rubio, 41, contracted the coronavirus in July, she struggled to make the few steps to the bathroom in the mobile home that she shared with her teenage daughter in Kent, Wash.

The pandemic had already shuttered her small construction business, which also provided for her parents and three children in Sinaloa, Mexico. Now, the virus left her struggling to breathe, trapped inside without any means to support the six family members who depended on her.

Around the time the pandemic hit Washington State, Ms. Rubio became eligible to apply for United States citizenship. She made a bit too much money to qualify for a reduction in the application fee, currently $640, and the economic effects of the pandemic and her illness sapped away her savings. She applied for food stamps, a benefit that could also provide a break on the fee, but has so far been unable to reach the overwhelmed social services agency that could help her.

If she cannot save the money or obtain a fee waiver before the fall, Ms. Rubio’s prospects of becoming a citizen will become more remote. The Trump administration moved late last month to raise the cost of naturalization applications by more than 80 percent and to substantially tighten eligibility requirements for a subsidized application.

The price for naturalization will jump to $1,160 or $1,170 for online applications. The rule will also lower the income threshold to qualify for a fee waiver and eliminate the partial subsidy for the application.

Almost all other exceptions that allowed immigrants to waive the fee will be eliminated, including extenuating financial hardship and means-tested public benefits, like food stamps. Only some protected immigrants, including victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, will remain eligible.

Ms. Rubio is one of many who would no longer be eligible for a waiver. Immigration lawyers across the country are rushing to submit their clients’ applications to the already backlogged agency before the fee increases are introduced on Oct. 2.

“It’s a low blow during a pandemic,” Ms. Rubio said through a translator. “I have worked a lot for this country, and if I’m a citizen, I can — not just contribute more — but I can also better reap the benefits of all of my hard work in this country.”

Advocates for immigrants say the fee increase is intended to stymie legal immigration and deprive immigrants of their right to vote before the election in November.

“It’s the first-ever wealth test on citizenship,” said Melissa Rodgers, the director of programs at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. She called the new rule “the most dramatic change we’ve ever seen to the structure of the immigration system” and its fees.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, whose budget is nearly entirely funded by its fees, has fallen into a financial crisis under the Trump administration and become even more strapped for cash as the coronavirus pandemic has sharply reduced applications for visas and other services.

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, who oversees U.S.C.I.S., has said that increases are necessary to align the fees with the “true cost” of processing applications in an already overly extended system.

The agency has pleaded with Congress for a $1.2 billion emergency injection as part of a proposed coronavirus relief package that has become mired in a partisan standoff and seems unlikely to pass before next month, if it passes at all. Without the money, the agency plans to furlough nearly 70 percent of its staff on Aug. 30. If Congress appropriates the funds, U.S.C.I.S. has proposed an additional 10 percent surcharge for its services, in addition to the fee increases.

In a statement, Joseph Edlow, the agency’s deputy director for policy, said the immigration service was required by law to modify its fees based on routine analysis of its finances. These “overdue adjustments in fees are necessary to efficiently and fairly administer our nation’s lawful immigration system, secure the homeland and protect Americans,” he said.

Immigration activists say that U.S.C.I.S.’s financial shortfalls are a result of mismanagement, including bloated staff and administrative inefficiencies that have discouraged new applicants.

Ms. Rodgers said the administration’s policies had “effectively bankrupted U.S.C.I.S.” The agency’s work force has burgeoned by 19 percent under the Trump administration, with many of those positions in fraud detection. Processes have slowed because of new interview requirements, and more applications have been rejected.

“This administration has no one to blame but themselves for driving an entire federal agency to the ground,” said Doug Rand, a former Obama administration official who worked on immigration policy. He questioned whether the new fees would solve the agency’s financial woes or simply reduce applications even further.

The Department of Homeland Security has stated that price changes would have little or no effect on the number of applicants.

Research has found otherwise. A study at Stanford University found that fee waivers granted to immigrants in New York doubled the likelihood that they would apply for naturalization. Duncan Lawrence, the executive director of the Stanford Immigration Policy Lab and an author of the study, called the new fees “a systemic wall for access to citizenship.”

Decades after she emigrated from San Luis Potosí, Mexico, Maria Turrubiartes, 65, became a citizen this year, partly because she wanted to help her husband apply for permanent residency. However, the new rule will increase the fee for his application by 52 percent, to $960.

Ms. Turrubiartes, who has epilepsy, said her husband remained her primary caregiver. Between her disability checks and her husband’s salary, it will be difficult to afford the new cost, she said, speaking through a translator. While they save for the fee, Ms. Turrubiartes and her husband, a cement worker, can no longer afford to send money to his parents in Mexico.

For the time being, they will forego anything that is not a necessity. If you love someone, these are the kinds of sacrifices you have to make, she said.

Some activists say the fee hike is part of a long-running effort by the administration to exploit anti-immigrant sentiment. President Trump promised to restrict immigration early in his campaign in 2016, and he has already made the issue a centerpiece of his bid for re-election.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a policy last year that would deny applicants for permanent residency based on their use of public benefits, including food stamps or Medicaid. A federal appeals court blocked that rule in several states this month.

Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said the new fees would disproportionately target immigrants from the poorest nations, such as those from Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and South and Central America — largely immigrants of color.

“This administration has been slicing and dicing and finding different ways to make it hard for immigrants to be included in this country,” Ms. Hincapié said. “This is about Trump trying to restrict who is considered worthy of being an American, and time and time again, he has sent the message to immigrants, especially low-income immigrants, that if you are not from Norway, you are not wanted in our country.”

To Ms. Rubio, that message is apparent. For now, she remains at home recovering from the coronavirus, with lots of water, fruit and vitamins. Her headaches have subsided and her sense of smell has returned, but she is still without work. Ms. Rubio sighed as she described what the virus had done to her prospects of becoming a citizen. Like many others, she has no idea how she will find the money before October, when those prospects will dwindle even further.

Citizenship would change her life in many ways, Ms. Rubio said through a translator. It would enable her to save for her retirement, visit her family in Mexico for extended periods and bring her parents to the United States. She said she was hopeful that her parents would join her in Washington State some day after she became a citizen.

Among the main reasons for her desire to become a citizen, Ms. Rubio said, was that she wanted to have a say in the political process that had made obtaining her naturalization so difficult.

“First,” she said, “I’m going to vote.”

Source: Looming Fee Increase Could Thwart Many U.S. Citizenship Applications

Under emergency coronavirus orders, the Trump administration is using hotels across the country to hold migrant children and families before expelling them.

The Trump administration has been using major hotel chains to detain children and families taken into custody at the border, creating a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions without the safeguards that are intended to protect the most vulnerable migrants.

Government data obtained by The New York Times, along with court documents, show that hotel detentions overseen by a private security company have ballooned in recent months under an aggressive border closure policy related to the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 100,000 migrants, including children and families, have been summarily expelled from the country under the measure. But rather than deterring additional migration, the policy appears to have caused border crossings to surge, in part because it eliminates some of the legal consequences for repeat attempts at illegal crossings.

The increase in hotel detentions is likely to intensify scrutiny of the policy, which legal advocacy groups have already challenged in court, saying it places children in an opaque system with few protections and violates U.S. asylum laws by returning them to life-threatening situations in their home countries.

Children as young as a year old — often arriving at the border with no adult guardians — are being put in hotels under the supervision of transportation workers who are not licensed to provide child care. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say the children are being adequately cared for during the hotel stays and emphasize that their swift expulsion is necessary to protect the country from the spread of the coronavirus.

Federal authorities have resorted to using hotels during previous spikes in immigration and as staging areas for short periods of time ahead of traditional deportations; the conditions are in many ways better than the cold, concrete Border Patrol holdings cells where many migrants have been left to languish in the past.

But because the hotels exist outside the formal detention system, they are not subject to policies designed to prevent abuse in federal custody or those requiring that detainees be provided access to phones, healthy food, medical and mental health care.

Parents and lawyers have no way of finding the children or monitoring their well-being while they are in custody.

The existence of the hotel detentions came to light last month, but documents reviewed by The New York Times reveal the extent to which major hotel chains are participating. The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has detained at least 860 migrants at a Quality Suites in San Diego, Hampton Inns in Phoenix, McAllen and El Paso, Texas, a Comfort Suites Hotel in Miami, a Best Western in Los Angeles and an Econo Lodge in Seattle.

Hotels Used to House People in ICE Custody

In the 2020 fiscal year, at least 900 people have been held by ICE in hotels, which are not subject to the same health and safety guidelines as federal detention centers.

Though the data does not specify ages, the official who provided it, as well as several former immigration officials who recently left the Trump administration, said it was likely that most or all were either children traveling alone or with their parents, because single adult migrants tend to be housed in Border Patrol holding stations.

The administration’s pandemic-related border closure policy calls for migrants to be expelled from the country, rather than put into traditional, formal deportation proceedings. Parents often send their children to the American border alone because they are more likely to win asylum if they are not traveling with adults.

Under the new policy, most children are instead being put on planes and returned to their home countries, primarily in Central America, though some have been handed over to child welfare authorities in Mexico, leading parents into desperate efforts to track their children down.

Searching for the children has been made nearly impossible because they are not being assigned identification numbers that would normally allow families to track their locations in the highly regulated federal detention system.

Immigration Enforcement at the Southwestern Border

In March, Border Patrol began to expel people apprehended at the border under a federal order known as Title 42.

Only rarely used in the past, the practice of expulsions has surged under the Trump administration’s coronavirus-related border ban. Unlike deportations, expulsions are meant to take place very soon after a migrant is encountered by immigration agents. But delays in securing flights necessary to return the increasing number of migrants now arriving at the border have led the administration to turn to MVM Inc., a private corporation known mostly as a transportation and security company, to detain migrant children and families.

Started in the late 1970s by three former Secret Service agents, MVM has grown substantially.

The company now has contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with nearly all of the federal agencies involved in immigration enforcement. It has secured at least $1.9 billion in federal contracts since 2008.

“The reputation was, ‘You ask it, they do it,’” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former deputy assistant director of the office of detention planning and policy at ICE. “No task was too big for MVM.”

Before the pandemic hit, MVM was the primary company used to transport migrant families encountered at the border to family detention centers. Its security workers oversee the tent courts that were erected to process cases of asylum seekers who have been made to wait out their cases in Mexico. In 2018, when a federal judge ordered the reunification of families that had been separated by immigration authorities along the border, MVM transported parents to staging facilities near the shelters where their children were being detained.

Despite its substantial transportation portfolio, MVM does not have much experience detaining migrant children. In a previous foray in 2018, the company was criticized for detaining children overnight in a vacant office park in Phoenix.

Two laws weigh heavily on the treatment of detained migrant children. The Prison Rape Elimination Act requires procedures to allow them to independently report physical or sexual abuse by government workers or contractors. To comply with the law, migrant detention centers post phone numbers to abuse hotlines and provide detainees with free access to phones. (Public data show that 105 such reports were made against government immigration contractors in 2018, the most recent year of available data.)

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act provides safeguards to ensure that detained children who could be abused or tortured in their home countries are not sent back into harm’s way.

Neither of these protections appear to apply to the informal hotel stays overseen by MVM.

“A transportation vendor should not be in charge of changing the diaper of a 1-year old, giving bottles to babies or dealing with the traumatic effects they might be dealing with,” said Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, another former deputy assistant director for custody management at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who worked with MVM during his time at the agency.

“I’m worried kids may be exposed to abuse, neglect, including sexual abuse, and we will have no idea,” he said.

A spokesman for MVM said the company’s contract with ICE bars representatives from responding to media requests.

ICE officials provided a statement explaining that MVM workers are trained in the requirements of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. But the company is not contractually required to follow its rules.

The statement said company employees are instructed “extensively” on how to handle situations where detained migrants would be left particularly vulnerable in their presence, such as when the migrants are bathing or breastfeeding. It says red flags indicating potential torture or abuse could be reported to the guards, who would then share the information with ICE. But there appear to be no mechanisms for detainees to report abuse by guards, except to other guards.

An ICE spokesman said no more than two children could be housed in a hotel room at any given time, but at least one migrant teenager said he was detained overnight in a hotel room in Miami with two other young migrants and three guards.

Expulsions have come to replace formal deportation proceedings as the primary way of processing migrants who try to enter the United States during the pandemic. About 109,621 people have been expelled from the southwest border since the restrictive policy went into effect.

Announced as a policy to prevent the coronavirus from spreading further in the United States, the border directive adopted in March, which relies on the authority available to the surgeon general during public health emergencies, was intended to block the flow of most nonessential travel across the northern and southern borders. Seeking asylum from violence or persecution is not considered essential under the policy.

But even with the restrictions in place, millions of people continue to cross the border each month, calling into question whether the expulsion policy can truly mitigate the spread of the virus.

And the Trump administration has been testing migrant children to confirm that they have not contracted the coronavirus before expelling them, as was first reported by ProPublica. If the children have been confirmed to be virus-free, they are then being expelled. Some children who test positive have remained in the hotels to quarantine, while other have been placed in government shelters for migrant children, as was the practice before the pandemic.

Unlike children, many adults have been deported and expelled despite having tested positive for the coronavirus.

While the practice of detaining migrant children and families in hotels has been previously reported, the fact that so many well-known hotels are part of the program only became apparent with the release of the list. Some of the hotels listed appeared to be unaware of the program.

After facing scrutiny for detaining dozens of migrant children and parents in its hotels in McAllen, Phoenix and El Paso, Hilton, whose participation was previously reported by The Associated Press, said that the decision to do so had been made by franchisees. The corporation said it would stop working with the federal government to detain migrants.

A legal challenge on behalf of the children detained at the hotel in McAllen was settled earlier this month when the government agreed to release them. One unaccompanied child and the few families that remained were transported to a family detention center in Karnes City, Texas.

A spokeswoman for the Choice Hotel chain, which has been used to detain migrants in Miami, Seattle and San Diego, said in response to the data obtained by The Times, “It has been our position that hotels should not be used as detention facilities, and we are not aware that any hotels in our franchise system are being used in this capacity. We ask that ​our franchised hotels, which are independently owned and operated, only be used for their intended purpose.”

Mike Karicher, a spokesman for the Hampton Inn in Phoenix, one hotel franchise that has been used by MVM, said management was not aware of the activity, and does not support or wish to be associated with it. “The hotel has confirmed that they will not accept similar business moving forward,” he said.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association, an industry trade group, said it opposed the use of hotels as detention centers and has sent out guidance to its members on “red flags” that could indicate rooms being used for this purpose.

The expulsion policy is part of a sweeping crackdown by the administration on both legal and illegal immigration that appears to have intensified in recent months. Confidential documents submitted by a court-appointed monitor in a long-running federal case warned that the use of hotels for detaining children had become prevalent.

“Begun as a relatively small, stopgap measure to assist in the transfer of children to ICE flights, the temporary housing program has been transformed by the Title 42 expulsion policies into an integral component of the immigration detention system for U.A.C.s in U.S. custody,” the monitor wrote, using the acronym for unaccompanied alien children.

There have been several legal attempts to challenge the expulsions, especially of children, including one case in which a judge recently appointed by President Trump sided against government lawyers. But the government avoided an injunction blocking the policy in each case by agreeing to release the individual children named as plaintiffs, rendering the challenges moot.

Immigrant advocates say that the government has also agreed to release individual children who have been discovered in the expulsion system.

But there are many others whose locations are unknown.

Lee Gelernt, who is leading the legal challenge against the policy for the A.C.L.U., said the primary problem is that children are not being offered a way to obtain asylum from unsafe conditions in their home countries, as is required by law. “As dangerous as it is for children to be secretly held in hotels,” he said, “the ultimate problem is that they are expelled without a hearing, regardless of where they are held.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

By Caitlin Dickerson

Source: A Private Security Company Is Detaining Migrant Children at Hotels

Subject: CLINIC BIA Pro Bono Project Recent Victories Friends,

 

BIA and federal circuit court appeals often feel like an uphill battle, a true David and Goliath fight. It can be particularly discouraging right now, during an isolating pandemic, when DHS and DOJ issue new regulations and the BIA and AG publish opinions almost weekly with the purpose of making it more difficult for noncitizens to win their cases.

However, CLINIC’s BIA Pro Bono Project continues to fight back and perform miracles—defeating Goliath—thanks to BIA Pro Bono Project Manager Rachel Naggar, BIA Pro Bono Project Legal Specialist Brenda Hernandez, and our many dedicated attorney volunteers.

Rachel and Brenda shared with me the project’s awe-inspiring stories of success from this summer and the volunteers who made these victories possible. In turn, I share these success stories with you to offer inspiration to keep fighting for your clients while the Trump administration escalates its attacks on immigrant communities.

 

• The BIA remanded the case of a Haitian asylum seeker on numerous grounds, including that the IJ did not apply the proper framework for assessing firm resettlement, the IJ mixed up the respondent’s political party when assessing his claim for withholding of removal, and the IJ did not meaningfully consider the respondent’s risk of future persecution. Thank you to Michael Ward of Alston&Bird!
• The BIA overturned the IJ’s adverse credibility finding against an asylum seeker from Burkina Faso. The BIA also found that the IJ erred in concluding there was no nexus between the harm the respondent suffered and his political opinion, including that the prosecution he endured was actually pretext for persecution. Thank you to Gregory Proctor, Marjorie Sheldon, and Christian Roccotagliata of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel!
• The BIA granted asylum to a Cuban refugee. Contrary to the IJ, the BIA found that the harm suffered by the respondent did cumulatively rise to the level of past persecution and he did have a well-founded fear of persecution. Thank you to Austin Manes and Aaron Frankel of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel!
• The BIA remanded the case of a Cuban asylum seeker because the IJ failed to consider the evidence of past economic persecution along with the physical harm suffered. The BIA also reminded the IJ that where the persecution is committed by the government, it is presumed that internal relocation is not reasonable, and the burden shifts to DHS to demonstrate that it would be reasonable in this case. Thank you to Dean Galaro of Perkins Coie!
• The BIA reopened the case of a Cuban asylum seeker because he had new evidence of harm and threats against his family that occurred after his final hearing with the immigration judge. Thank you to Astrid Ackerman and Aaron Webman of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel!
• The Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review of a Ghanaian asylum seeker, overturning the IJ’s negative credibility finding and concluding that the Board had failed to adequately consider the country conditions evidence when it denied CAT relief. You can read the full decision here. Thank you to Kari Hong of Boston College Law School!
• The Third Circuit, in a published decision, granted a Honduran asylum seeker’s petition for review, finding that the IJ and BIA erred in analyzing whether the respondent had suffered past persecution. The Court also found that the IJ failed to conduct the proper analysis regarding the need for evidence in an application for CAT protection. You can read the full decision here. Thank you to Aaron Rabinowitz and Gary Levin of Baker & Hostetler!
• The Sixth Circuit, in a published decision, granted a Russian asylum seeker’s petition for review, finding that the IJ and BIA erred in concluding that the respondent was not persecuted on account of his political opinions and that his indictment for peacefully protesting under Russian law was a pretext for persecution. You can read the full decision here. Thank you to Brenna Duncan and Andrew Caridas of Perkins Coie!
• DHS withdrew its appeal of a grant of asylum from Mexico to a Cuban national. DHS conceded to the IJ that the respondent was eligible for asylum from Mexico, but not Cuba because of the Third Country Transit Bar. DHS changed its mind and filed an appeal, which was withdrawn after pro bono counsel filed his brief. Thank you to James Montana of The Law Office of James Montana!
• The BIA dismissed an appeal by the Department of Homeland Security and upheld a Cuban woman’s grant of asylum. The Board found that the IJ was correct in deeming the respondent eligible for asylum and not subject to the Third Country Transit Bar. Thank you to Aaron Rabinowitz and Jeffrey Lyons of Baker & Hostetler!
• ICE released a Venezuelan asylum seeker from detention to reunite with her spouse, after tremendous advocacy efforts by her pro bono attorney. Thank you to David Gottlieb!
• The Ninth Circuit remanded the case of a Honduran victim of domestic violence, at the request of the Department of Justice. The Court ordered the BIA to reconsider whether the respondent had demonstrated that the Honduran government acquiesced in her persecution, whether the respondent is part of a viable particular social group, whether it would have been futile for her to report the harm to local authorities, and whether internal relocation would be reasonable. Thank you to Alicia Chen!
• A victim of human rights violations by the notorious Eritrean military was granted withholding of removal, after the BIA overturned the IJ’s adverse credibility finding and found that the IJ failed to consider that the country conditions evidence corroborated the respondent’s claim. Thank you to Jonaki Singh and Susan Jacquemot of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel!
• The Ninth Circuit remanded the case of an asylum seeker from Mexico, at the request of the Department of Justice. The Court ordered the BIA to reconsider whether the respondent had been persecuted and sexually assaulted on account of her sexual orientation, and whether the government of Mexico could adequately protect her from future harm. Thank you to Tim Patton of the Appellate Immigration Project!
• The Fourth Circuit granted the petition for review holding that a conviction under VA 18.2-280(A) is not a removable firearms offense, a result that would not have been possible had Mr. Gordon not continued to fight his case for so many years even despite being deported. You can read the decision here. Thank you to the CAIR Coalition and Ted Howard at Wiley Rein! Thank you also to the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild for the amicus support!

Jose came to the United States in 1985 to live with his father as a permanent resident. He built a life in the United States, becoming a father himself. After a run in with the law, he was placed in removal proceedings and was detained for 19 months.In a 2-1 decision, the Third Circuit found that under the unique circumstances of this case, Jose’s father was deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Jose is a United States citizen, the court declared, and has been since 1985.In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Sessions v. Morales-Santana, Jose’s case was the first to benefit from this Supreme Court decision. You can read the full decision here. The government petitioned for rehearing, but the full Third Circuit declined to intervene.

Ultimately, the government declined to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. For the better part of the last decade, Jose’s life has been filled with uncertainty and stress, but not anymore, which is very important as Jose is expecting his first grandchild. A huge thank you to Nick Curcio who has represented Jose for 7 years!

 

In its 19+ years of operation, the Project has reviewed more than 7,200 cases, pairing attorneys and law school clinics with vulnerable asylum seekers and long-time lawful permanent residents. If you are interested in representing a case through CLINIC’s BIA Pro Bono Project, please complete our volunteer form. If you prefer to show your support for the BIA Pro Bono Project via a monetary donation, please designate “BIA Pro Bono Project” in the “In honor of” field of our donations page.

 

Gratefully and in solidarity,

 

Michelle N. Mendez (she/her/ella/elle)

Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)

***************************

Thanks Michelle, my friend, colleague, and courageous leader of the NDPA.  What a timely, wonderful, practical, “real life” illustration of Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow’s “praise and call to action for pro bono” that I republished earlier this week! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/08/11/lifesaving-101-for-the-ndpa-begins-with-pro-bono-never-has-the-need-been-greater-pro-bonos-finest-hour-in-americas-time-of-darkness-cruelty-inhumanity/

Here’s what our colleague Judge Jeffrey Chase has to say about Michelle and CLINIC:

No surprise, Michelle.  CLINIC is responsible for so much good case law.  And the non-CLINIC successful attorneys probably used CLINIC training or practice advisories.  Congrats to you and all of your outstanding attorneys and support staff, and thanks for all you do!

Even in times of our greatest national darkness and misery, there are plenty of lives that can be saved! Contrary to the “Dred Scottification” — dehumanization of persons in our country — unconscionably pushed by the regime and enabled by many public officials and courts that “should know better,” every person’s life is important!

And, despite the conscious misinterpretation and misapplication of the Fifth Amendment by far too many of those charged with upholding it, every person in the U.S., regardless of race or status, is entitled to due process, fundamental fairness, and to be treated with human dignity.

Think of how much progress we could make if we didn’t have to keep re-litigating all the same issues over and over again, often with differing results!

What if the “precedents” concentrated on those cases that could be granted, rather than almost exclusively focusing on “roadmaps to denial?”

What if we promoted and supported great pro bono representation, rather than inhibiting and discouraging it?

What if meritorious cases were moved to the “head of the line” instead of continuously being “shuffled off to Buffalo” by “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) thereby languishing in the mindlessly expanding backlog?

What if Federal Judges at all levels were the “best and the brightest” — selected from among those with demonstrated expertise in immigration, asylum and human rights and impeccable reputations for due process, fundamental fairness, and humanity, rather than being selected for “go along to get along” reputations or allegiance to perverse political ideologies that undermine equal justice for all?

What if our Immigration Court system were administered independently and professionally, rather than as a biased and weaponized tool of DHS enforcement and White Nationalist politicos?

What if our Justice System worked cooperatively with folks like Michelle, Jason, Judge Ashley Tabaddor, and many others with good, creative, practical ideas for institutionalizing “best practices” leading to to “due process with efficiency?”

What if we fairly implemented our refugee, asylum, and protection legal framework to “protect rather than reject?”

What if we consistently treated our fellow beings as humans, rather than as “less than human?”

What if we viewed immigration for what it really is: the foundation of our nation and a continuing source of great strength, pride, and optimism for our country of immigrants, rather than pretending that we live on an island and must “wall off” the rest of the world?

This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it! Because they do!

Michelle Mendez
Defending Vulnerable Populations Director
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.
(“CLINIC”)

Source: 😇🌞🗽⚖️👍🏼“A LIGHT IN THE FOREST” — Michelle Mendez @ CLINIC Shows How Good Pro Bono Lawyering Saves Lives Even When The System Is Rigged Against Justice For Immigrants!

Dozens of federal agents were deployed in Bend, Ore., late Wednesday after protesters stood for hours to block the path of buses that held two people who had been seized by immigration agents, according to witnesses and videos from the scene.

The federal officers came to the scene of the protest, a hotel parking lot, in helmets and tactical gear, said Barb Campbell, a member of the Bend City Council. Using crowd-control devices such as pepper spray, the officers were able to work their way through the crowd, remove the detainees from one of the buses and take them away, she said.

The effort to block the buses began on Wednesday morning when Luke Richter, president of the activist group Central Oregon Peacekeepers, heard from a friend that officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were operating in the city. He was able to find two unmarked buses and decided to block their path while livestreaming video from the scene.

Others later joined the effort, including Ms. Campbell, who parked her vehicle and set up a lawn chair in front of one of the buses. As the day wore on, hundreds of protesters gathered. Mr. Richter said he was overwhelmed by the response from the community.

“They are not welcome here,” Mr. Richter said of the federal agents.

It was not immediately clear why the men were detained. In a statement,

ICE

accused the men of having a “history of criminal violent behavior.”“While ICE respects the rights of people to voice their opinion peacefully, that does not include interfering with their federal law enforcement duties,” the statement said.

Ms. Campbell said that if the men had committed crimes, the city’s Police Department and district attorney could handle it without the involvement of federal officers.

Lawyers from the Portland-based Innovation Law Lab filed a motion in federal court to block the removal of the detainees.

By Mike Baker

Source: Protesters Blocked ICE Buses in Oregon. Federal Agents Responded in Force.

Her parents’ arrival to Berkeley as young graduate students was the beginning of a historic wave of immigration from outside Europe that would change the United States in ways its leaders never imagined.

When Kamala Harris’s mother left India for California in 1958, the percentage of Americans who were immigrants was at its lowest point in over a century.

That was about to change.

Her arrival at Berkeley as a young graduate student — and that of another student, an immigrant from Jamaica whom she would marry — was the beginning of a historic wave of immigration from outside Europe that would transform the United States in ways its leaders never imagined. Now, the American-born children of these immigrants — people like Ms. Harris — are the face of this country’s demographic future.

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice of Ms. Harris as his running mate has been celebrated as a milestone because she is the first Black woman and the first of Indian descent in American history to be on a major party’s presidential ticket. But her selection also highlights a remarkable shift in this country: the rise of a new wave of children of immigrants, or second-generation Americans, as a growing political and cultural force, different from any that has come before.

The last major influx of immigrants, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, came primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe. This time the surge comes from around the world, from India and Jamaica to China and Mexico and beyond.

In California, the state where Ms. Harris grew up and which she now represents in the Senate, about half of all children come from immigrant homes. Nationwide, for the first time in this country’s history, whites make up less than half of the population under the age of 16, the Brookings Institution has found; the trend is driven by larger numbers of Asians, Hispanics and people who are multiracial.

Today, more than a quarter of American adults are immigrants or the American-born children of immigrants. About 25 million adults are American-born children of immigrants, representing about 10 percent of the adult population, according to Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center. By comparison the foreign-born portion of the population is still much larger — about 42 million adults, or roughly one in six of the country’s 250 million adults, Mr. Passel noted.

At 55, Ms. Harris is on the older side of this second generation of Americans whose parents came in those early years. But her family is part of a larger trend that has broad implications for the country’s identity, transforming a mostly white baby-boomer society into a multiethnic and racial patchwork.

Because of the influx of immigrants from outside Europe and their children, every successive generation in America in the past half-century has been less white than the one before: Boomers are 71.6 percent white, Millennials are 55 percent white, and post-Gen Z, those born after 2012, are 49.6 percent white, according William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

“The demography is moving forward,” said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who has studied these modern children of immigrants from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico. “This is the future in the U.S.”

The immigrants who arrived about fifty years ago — people from countries like India, China and Korea — often had higher education, but rarely went into politics. Their children, now middle-aged adults, are the ones moving into American public life.

“When my parents came, it was like, ‘we just want to make it,’” said Suhas Subramanyam, who was born to Indian parents in Houston in the 1980s and in 2019 became the first Indian-American to be elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. “But the second generation, we want to make our mark on the world. I wanted to do more than just work at a law firm and make money. I feel very patriotic about America.”

There were only about 12,000 Indian immigrants in the United States around the time Ms. Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, arrived. Satish Korpe, an engineer who moved to Virginia in 1975, said there were so few Indian immigrants in the state when he got there that there was not a single Indian food store, and people drove to New Jersey to buy groceries.

“In the mid-1970s, if you ran into someone who was American, you might have been the first Indian person they’d ever seen,” he said. “Then in the 1980s, maybe you would be the fifth. And in the 1990s, the tenth.”

These changes trace back the passage of the landmark 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which abolished the quotas that were established in the 1920s to keep America white and Protestant. The 1965 law banned discrimination based on ethnicity in the immigration system and prioritized entry for people with relatives already in the United States and those with special skills.

In addition to opening the door to many more immigrants from India, the law also ended a strict quota on the number of immigrants from the British West Indies.

Previously about only 100 Jamaican immigrants a year were allowed into the country. And in 1960, around the time when Ms. Harris’s father Donald Harris began to settle in the United States, there were fewer than 25,000 Jamaican immigrants in the United States, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But by 2018, that number had increased to more than 733,000.

Amber Simon’s Jamaican mother came to the United States in 1984 at the invitation of an aunt. She eventually married a Black man from Alabama, and Ms. Simon, now 24, remembers growing up in Tampa, Fla. and feeling that her friends’ houses were different. They did not take off their shoes or have the same kind of respect for their parents that was the rule in her Jamaican household.

Donald Harris holds his daughter, Kamala, in 1965. Credit…Kamala Harris campaign, via Associated Press.
Her father taught her to conform to society, and to try not to stand out, and he talked to her about the dangers of the police. But her mother, who lived in Jamaica until she was 15, had none of those views.
“Half of me grew up oblivious to the fact that I was a minority, and half of me was really conscious of it,” said Ms. Simon, who began to write online about her thinking on race after the killing of George Floyd.
She visited Jamaica for the first time last year, and said she was stunned at how much it resembled her father’s living circumstances growing up: deeply poor. But she also gained an even greater respect for her mother, who, through force of will, completed her education and is now a project analyst for the federal government.

“I always say, if my Mom can overcome the obstacles she’s faced as an immigrant, there’s absolutely no reason I can’t have the success that I dream of,” said Ms. Simon, who is beginning an M.B.A. program next month. “There’s no excuse for me to not be exactly where I want to be in life.”

In 1970, when Ms. Harris was growing up and the effects of the 1965 law were not felt fully yet, America was still mostly a country of Black and white. Immigrants were less than 5 percent of the population. Ms. Harris’ parents divorced when she was 5, and her mother raised Ms. Harris and her sister as Black girls, because she knew American society would see them that way.

“My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,” Ms. Harris wrote in her book, “The Truths We Hold.”

Navigating the divide between Black and white can be difficult for the children of immigrants who are neither. Ghazala Hashmi grew up in southern Georgia, in the only Indian family in her small town. Her father had brought the family there after finishing his doctorate in the late 1960s.

“We were a minority of one in our school, always,” said Ms. Hashmi, 56, who is now a state senator in Virginia. “I never knew anybody who was like me. It was extremely isolating.”

Ms. Hashmi was in second grade when her school began to be integrated. She has clear memories of the awkward feeling of not fitting into a neat racial category, in a country where people clearly wanted to put her in one.

“I was very conscious as a child of being neither Black nor white,” she said. “The white children would not play with the Black children, and apparently I could play with either. Sometimes I could mediate. It was very formative to be part of that as an immigrant and a child of the South.”

Eventually more families came, and by the time her sister was born eight years later, there were more South Asian children to play with.

Last fall, Ms. Hashmi, a former literature professor and a Democrat, flipped a State Senate seat in central Virginia. The tagline for her campaign, she said, was “Ghazala Hashmi is an American name.”

Ghazala Hashmi delivers her victory speech after winning a seat in the Virginia Senate in November. CBS News

“I really needed people to understand that there was a more complex America that was growing,” she said, “that my name was part of a new American identity that had been emerging for 40 years, and we just hadn’t been conscious of it.”

These children of immigrants are mostly better off economically than immigrants. They earn more, are more educated, and are more likely to own a home, according to a 2013 Pew report. And they are more likely to marry a person of another race: Interracial marriage rates are especially high for second-generation Hispanics, at 26 percent, and among Asians, 23 percent, Pew found.

The cultural clout of immigrant families is set to grow even more given that America’s population is now growing at its lowest rate since 1919, because of a drop in births and an acceleration in deaths. If current trends continue, 93 percent of the growth of the nation’s working-age population between now and 2050 will be accounted for by immigrants and their U.S.-born children, Pew projected.

They are also a growing political force: More than 23 million immigrants will be eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election, Pew has found. That is roughly 10 percent of the nation’s overall electorate, a record high. And because they and their children have tended to vote for Democrats, the political winds are shifting in states like Arizona, Nevada, Virginia, Georgia and Texas.

Ashu Rai grew up in the 1970s about 70 miles east of where Ms. Harris was born. Her town had a Sikh temple that was a gathering place for South Asians from miles around. As a child, she played on the grass outside and went to potluck suppers at people’s houses after worship. But South Asians were still rare in her suburban life, and for a while as a teenager, Ms. Rai pretended to be Hispanic.

“It was just easier to assimilate, rather than trying to explain what being from India meant,” said Ms. Rai, whose Indian parents went to Wyoming in 1969 to earn postgraduate degrees before moving to California.

Today Ms. Rai, a Democrat, feels proud of her Indian roots. She works in health care marketing, and organizes dance parties for L.G.B.T.Q. South Asians. She badly wanted Ms. Harris to win the presidential primary. So when the senator was picked for the ticket this week, Ms. Rai was elated.

“My first word when I found out? I think it was a swear word,” she said. “I was like, ‘she’s got it.’”

By Sabrina Tavernise

 

Source: Kamala Harris, Daughter of Immigrants, Is the Face of America’s Demographic Shift

USCIS has raised its immigration filing fees effective October 2, 2020. Applications and petitions postmarked or filed on or after October 2, 2020, must include these new fees. Please note that USCIS will reject your submission if the fees are not correct!

New USCIS’ fees effective October 2, 2020:

Immigration Benefit Request	Current Fee	Final Fee	Change ($)	Change (%)
I-90 Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card (online filing)	$455	$405	($50)	-11
I-90 Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card (paper filing)	$455	$415	($40)	-9
I-102 Application for Replacement/Initial Nonimmigrant Arrival-Departure Document	$445	$485	$40	9
I-129 Petition for a Nonimmigrant worker	$460	N/A	N/A	N/A
I-129CW, I-129E&TN, and I-129MISC	$460	$695	$235	51
I-129H1	$460	$555	$95	21
I-129H2A – Named Beneficiaries	$460	$850	$390	85
I-129H2B – Named Beneficiaries	$460	$715	$255	55
I-129L	$460	$805	$345	75
I-129O	$460	$705	$245	53
I-129H2A – Unnamed Beneficiaries	$460	$415	($45)	-10
I-129H2B – Unnamed Beneficiaries	$460	$385	($75)	-16
I-129F Petition for Alien Fiancé(e)	$535	$510	($25)	-5
I-130 Petition for Alien Relative (online filing)	$535	$550	$15	3
I-130 Petition for Alien Relative (paper filing)	$535	$560	$25	5
I-131 Application for Travel Document	$575	$590	$15	3
I-131 Refugee Travel Document for an individual age 16 or older	$135	$145	$10	7
I-131 Refugee Travel Document for a child under the age of 16	$105	$115	$10	10
I-131A Application for Travel Document (Carrier Documentation)	$575	$1,010	$435	76
I-140 Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker	$700	$555	($145)	-21
I-191 Application for Relief Under Former Section 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)	$930	$790	($140)	-15
I-192 Application for Advance Permission to Enter as Nonimmigrant (CBP)	$585	$1,400	$815	139
I-192 Application for Advance Permission to Enter as Nonimmigrant (USCIS)	$930	$1,400	$470	51
I-193 Application for Waiver of Passport and/or Visa	$585	$2,790	$2,205	377
I-212 Application for Permission to Reapply for Admission into the U.S. After Deportation or Removal	$930	$1,050	$120	13
I-290B Notice of Appeal or Motion	$675	$700	$25	4
I-360 Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant	$435	$450	$15	3
I-485 Application to Register Permanent Residence	$1,140	$1,130	($10)	-1
I-485 Application to Adjust Status	$750	$1,130	$380	51
I-526 Immigrant Petition by Alien Investor	$3,675	$4,010	$335	9
I-539 Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status (online filing)	$370	$390	$20	5
I-539 Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status (paper filing)	$370	$400	$30	8
I-589 Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal	$0	$50	$50	N/A
I-600/600A Adoption Petitions and Applications	$775	$805	$30	4
I-600A Supplement 3 Request for Action on Approved Form I-600A	N/A	$400	N/A	N/A
I-601 Application for Waiver of Ground of Excludability	$930	$1,010	$80	9
I-601A Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver	$630	$960	$330	52
I-612 Application for Waiver of the Foreign Residence Requirement (Under Section 212(e) of the INA, as Amended)	$930	$515	($415)	-45
I-687 Application for Status as a Temporary Resident	$1,130	$1,130	$0	0
I-690 Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility	$715	$765	$50	7
I-694 Notice of Appeal of Decision	$890	$715	($175)	-20
I-698 Application to Adjust Status from Temporary to Permanent Resident (Under Section 245A of the INA)	$1,670	$1,615	($55)	-3
I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence	$595	$760	$165	28
I-765 Application for Employment Authorization (Non-DACA)	$410	$550	$140	34
I-765 Application for Employment Authorization (DACA only)	$410	$410	$0	0
I-800/800A Adoption Petitions and Applications	$775	$805	$30	4
I-800A Supplement 3 Request for Action on Approved Form I-800A	$385	$400	$15	4
I-817 Application for Family Unity Benefits	$600	$590	($10)	-2
I-824 Application for Action on an Approved Application or Petition	$465	$495	$30	6
I-829 Petition by Investor to Remove Conditions	$3,750	$3,900	$150	4
I-881 Application for Suspension of Deportation	$285	$1,810	$1,525	535
I-881 Application for Special Rule Cancellation of Removal	$570	$1,810	$1,240	218
I-910 Application for Civil Surgeon Designation	$785	$635	($150)	-19
I-924 Application For Regional Center Designation Under the Immigrant Investor Program	$17,795	$17,795	$0	0
I-924A Annual Certification of Regional Center	$3,035	$4,465	$1,430	47
I-929 Petition for Qualifying Family Member of a U-1 Nonimmigran	$230	$1,485	$1,255	546
N-300 Application to File Declaration of Intention	$270	$1,305	$1,035	383
N-336 Request for Hearing on a Decision in Naturalization Proceedings (online filing)	$700	$1,725	$1,025	146
N-336 Request for Hearing on a Decision in Naturalization Proceedings (paper filing)	$700	$1,735	$1,035	148
N-400 Application for Naturalization (online filing)	$640	$1,160	$520	81
N-400 Application for Naturalization (paper filing)	$640	$1,170	$530	83
N-400 Application for Naturalization (paper filing)	$320	$1,170	$850	266
N-470 Application to Preserve Residence for Naturalization Purposes	$355	$1,585	$1,230	346
N-565 Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship Document (online filing)	$555	$535	($20)	-4
N-565 Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship Document (paper filing)	$555	$545	($10)	-2
N-600 Application for Certificate of Citizenship (online filing)	$1,170	$990	($180)	-15
N-600 Application for Certificate of Citizenship (paper filing)	$1,170	$1,000	($170)	-15
N-600K Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate (online filing)	$1,170	$935	($235)	-20
N-600K Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate (paper filing)	$1,170	$945	($225)	-19
USCIS Immigrant Fee	$220	$190	($30)	-14
Biometric Services (Non-DACA)	$85	$30	($55)	-65
Biometric Services (DACA only)	$85	$85	$0	0
G-1041 Genealogy Index Search Request (online filing)	$65	$160	$95	146
G-1041 Genealogy Index Search Request (paper filing)	$65	$170	$105	162
G-1041A Genealogy Records Request (online filing)	$65	$255	$190	292
G-1041A Genealogy Records Request (paper filing)	$65	$265	$200	308

Source of Information:

USCIS, 7/31/20, News Release:

USCIS Adjusts Fees to Help Meet Operational Needs

 

DHS Final Rule (PDF)

Source: Update – USCIS Immigration Filing Fees to Increase – Table

Source: Federal Court Greenlights New DACA Challenge

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 13, 2020

CONTACT
– Juan Gastelum, National Immigration Law Center (NILC), 213-375-3149, media@nilc.org
– Yatziri Tovar, Make the Road New York (MRNY), 917-771-2818, yatziri.tovar@maketheroadny.org
– Ramis Wadood, Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) at Yale Law School, 203-432-4800, ramis.wadood@ylsclinics.org