This week in immigration news – January 26, 2022

Biden is defending key Trump immigration policies in court

Biden’s Department of Justice is defending the use of Title 42, which allows the United States to bar noncitizens from entering the country for public health reasons. Title 42 was originally brought into use by the Trump administration during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

His administration is also working on getting cases in California and Pennsylvania related to family separations dismissed. Talks about financially compensating families affected by the 2018 Trump administration’s family separation policy appear to have fallen apart.

COVID-19, surge in new cases create historic backlog jam in U.S. immigration courts, report says

Pending asylum cases reached a historic high of 1.6 million at the end of December. The average wait time for an immigrant applying for asylum is now just under five years, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, which authored the report on the case backlog.

A town in Mexico survives entirely on money sent back by U.S. migrants

As pine lumber in Comachuen dried up, the town has become increasingly reliant on money sent back by family members in the United States—allowing many in this Purepecha Indigenous community to remain in their homes and preserve the Purepecha language.