This week in immigration news – February 23, 2022

Vast immigration surveillance program in dire need of reform, Biden administration warned
Lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates alike are concerned by the level of surveillance that ISAP—a surveillance program run by BI, Inc., a subsidiary of the for-profit detention company Geo Group—is conducting, and how this data might be shared. The data uploaded by the almost 182,000 people in the program is stored in an app called SmartLink, but lawmakers have pushed for increased transparency around its storage and collection.

A key pillar of Biden’s immigration policy is going on trial this week in Texas
Texas Governor Greg Abbot has been leading the charge against the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement guidelines, which have set priorities and don’t seek to deport all undocumented immigrants, unlike the rules under the Trump administration.

One in 10 Black people in the U.S. are migrants. Here’s what’s driving that shift

Roughly one in five Black people in the United States is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. The Refugee Act of 1980, which raised the cap on the number of refugees allowed to settle in the United States, as well as the Diversity Visa program, have both contributed to more diverse migration.