This week in immigration news – January 21, 2021

Joe Biden to propose 8-year citizenship path for immigrants

President Joe Biden is planning a massive reversal of President Trump’s immigration policies, including a proposal for the 11 million undocumented people in the United States to be put on a path to citizenship.

For individuals who have DACA or TPS statuses, the wait to receive a green card could be less than the proposed eight years. The proposal is said to include plans to deploy technology to patrol the border with Mexico.

Trump administration to deport man to Haiti who has never been there

Paul Pierrilus was on one of the final deportation flights of the Trump administration this week. While his parents are Haitian, they never applied for Haitian citizenship, and Pierrilus himself was born in St. Martin.

He was told by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that they have documents proving that he is a Haitian citizen, meaning that Pierrilus was deported to a country that he’s never been to and that he’s allegedly not even a citizen of.

‘He just cries and cries’: families grapple with US deportations amid pandemic

Even though the coronavirus pandemic has not stopped since it began in March 2020, ICE resumed detentions in mid-July 2020, forcing families to deal with both separations and the threat of the virus.

Deported marine veteran, exiled for 12 years, finally wins U.S. citizenship  

Roman Sabal, who served in the U.S. Marines in the late 1980s and early 1990s, began the process to become a citizen more than a decade ago. But after he returned to Belize in 2008, he was stranded, having missed an immigration hearing that he didn’t know about.

His route to becoming a citizen came upon other additional challenges, including not being allowed to cross the border in 2019 to keep a naturalization appointment, and not being allowed to leave Belize during the pandemic. While he is now in temporary housing, he will be able to be reunited with his family soon.