This week in immigration news – October 6, 2021

Senior State Department official calls Biden’s deportation of Haitians illegal
While the State Department defended the deportations under Title 42 of the 1944 Public Health and Service Act, Harold Koh, a legal advisor and a veteran of the Obama administration, has claimed that the administration has a strict legal responsibility to not deport people who have a credible fear of returning to Haiti. According to an anonymous source, his views are widespread at the State Department.

Court blocks California from banning privately run U.S. immigration detention centers
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in a 2–1 decision that California cannot include for-profit immigration detention centers in its ban on private, for-profit prisons.

92 legal scholars call on Harris to preside over Senate to include immigration in reconciliation
Legal scholars have noted that Harris, as vice president and presiding officer in the Senate, has the ability to overrule the Senate parliamentarian. They also noted that the claims that the budgetary impact of providing a pathway to citizenship for eight million immigrants would be substantial—$140 billion over 10 years, which is more than some entire statutes in years past.

“Documented Dreamers” ask Congress to end self-deportation, family separation
There are an estimated 200,000 youth who, as dependents of their parents on temporary work visas, had legal status in the United States. After age 21, these youth lose legal status and either have to self-deport or find some other way to obtain legal status in the United States. They are also not eligible for DACA, because as a dependent of their parents, they entered the United States legally and not unlawfully. Young immigrants are calling on Congress to address this issue.