At the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, those detained received the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Some are now two months or more from their inoculation, meaning that under CDC recommendations, they would be eligible for their booster. Continue Read More
In this episode of "Traverse Talks with Sueann Ramella," KUOW reporter Esmy Jimenez talks about her life growing up in a rural part of central Washington as an undocumented immigrant, being the first in her family to attend college, and the fun and hardship of reporting on the never-ending news cycle. Read More
In this episode of Traverse Talks with Sueann Ramella, reporter Esmy Jimenez talks about her life growing up in a rural part of central Washington as an undocumented immigrant, being the first in her family to navigate governmental organizations, and the fun and hardship of reporting on the never ending news cycle. Esmy has reported for… Read More
Ly Tran's memoir House of Sticks brings to mind both the story of The Three Little Pigs and the myth of the unassimilated other in Francois Truffaut's The Wild Child (L'Enfant Sauvage), in its unsentimental yet deeply moving examination of filial bond, displacement, war trauma, and poverty. Read More
Nước — the Vietnamese word for country and water — permeates Eric Nguyen's haunting debut. Signifying both a place of origin and the means by which a boat refugee departs from such place of origin, Things We Lost to the Water poignantly explores all the ways in which Vietnamese refugees are affected by country and water — in sum, by dislocation. Read More
The White House has walked back its announcement that it will keep this year's historically low refugee ceiling of 15,000 set by the Trump administration, saying its earlier statement Friday, which was panned by fellow Democrats, was meant only to ease restrictions from countries from which refugees are currently banned. Read More
Youn Yuh-jung is an institution in Korean cinema. Her career spans five decades and includes starring roles in classic Korean films and famous TV dramas. Now, at 73, she has newfound fame in the U.S. for her role in the Oscar-nominated film Minari. Read More
More than 170,000 migrants were taken into custody at the Southwest border in March, the highest monthly total since at least 2006, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials who have been briefed on the preliminary numbers but are not authorized to speak publicly. Read More
It is true, as Biden states, that numbers often rise during the early months of the year when temperatures begin to warm. But the number of children arriving today without their parents is considerably higher than at the same time in 2019 and 2020. In fact, the number of unaccompanied children being apprehended by the Border Patrol were higher in February than they've been Read More
The U.S. government had 4,276 unaccompanied migrant children in custody as of Sunday, according to a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by NPR. The children are spending an average of 117 hours in detention facilities, far longer than the 72 hours allowed by law. Read More
BY FRANCO ORDOÑEZ & JOHN BURNETT A record number of migrant children and teenagers are being held in warehouse-like detention facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection near the southern border, and new documents obtained by NPR show that the number of children arriving without their parents is growing exponentially faster than the Biden… Read More
The Biden administration said Monday that it will allow many Venezuelans who are already in the country illegally to remain because of the humanitarian and economic crisis in the socialist South American nation that is an adversary of the U.S. Read More
BY LILLY FOWLER / CROSSCUT Originally published March 2, 2021, on Crosscut.com After years of pressure from activists, the detention of adults and teens by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be severely curtailed in the Pacific Northwest, thanks to action in the courts and in the Washington Legislature. Last week, the Washington state House… Read More
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday made it more difficult for undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for a long time to fight deportation. The court's 5-to-3 ruling came in the case of a man who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years but who had used a fake Social Security card to get a job as a janitor. Read More
The travails of immigrant life take a quietly beguiling form in Minari, a semi-autobiographical film by Lee Isaac Chung that brims with humor, humanity and hope. Showing us characters new to American screens, the story centers on a South Korean family named Yi who hope to make a go of farming in rural Arkansas during the Reagan years. Minari takes its title from the name Read More
Congressional Democrats unveiled a sweeping the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, an immigration bill that includes setting up a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Continue Reading Read More
The Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is the latest to detail how the Trump administration's family separation policy was a mess from the beginning. In a report out this month, the inspector general found there was little recordkeeping and no plan for how to reunite these families. Read More
If approved next month, the additional $70 million would make Washington state a nationwide leader in help offered to the undocumented community, which has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, Latino and Black people in particular. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an unprecedented $125 million in aid for undocumented workers. Washington state Read More
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested a temporary restraining order against the Department of Homeland Security last Friday. A federal judge granted the request Tuesday, suspending President Biden's 100-day deportation ban. Read More
Justices expressed doubts about a plan to cut undocumented immigrants from a key census count — one that would exclude them for purposes of drawing new congressional districts. Continue Reading Supreme Court Weighs Read More
It's the latest court ruling against the Trump administration's attempts to terminate the Obama-era program that protects young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Continue Reading Judge Rules Acting DHS Read More
President-elect Biden is expected to quickly reverse some of the Trump administration's most controversial policies. But his ability to reshape immigration would be limited in a divided government. Continue Reading From Read More
The justices will hear oral arguments Nov. 30, increasing the potential for Trump to try to omit unauthorized immigrants from the census numbers used to reallocate House seats during his current term. Continue Reading Read More
The former political adviser to President Trump was indicted alongside three other people in connection with an effort to defraud "hundreds of thousands of donors," according to federal prosecutors. Continue Reading Read More
The Constitution says the count used to divide up seats in Congress must include every person living in the U.S. President Trump is calling for unauthorized immigrants to be left out. Continue Reading President Trump Read More
As NPR reported earlier this week, the Trump administration has not been accepting new applicants even after the Supreme Court ruled last month that the administration didn't go about ending the program correctly. Continue Reading Read More
A federal judge announced on Tuesday that ICE has reached an agreement with schools that sued it over the rule change. The directive will now be rescinded nationwide. Continue Reading ICE Agrees To Rescind Policy Barring Read More
New federal rules will prohibit international students from completing fully online courses of study while in the U.S. Monday's announcement comes as more colleges release their plans for the fall. Continue Reading ICE: Read More
A narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court extended a life-support line to some 650,000 so-called DREAMers on Thursday, allowing them to remain safe from deportation for now, while the Trump administration jumps through the administrative hoops that the court said are required before ending the program. Read More
The video shows a white police killings seen nationwide — but there's a third identifiable person: an Asian American officer seen running interference with the crowd and standing watch. He's now-former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao, a Hmong American — which is how you know this isn't "any" city. It's Minneapolis. Read More
Carlos Escobar-Mejia, 57, had been in ICE custody since Jan. 10, when he was stopped in a car by the Border Patrol in Chula Vista, Calif. Before then, he had been living in the U.S. for 40 years. Continue Reading First COVID-19 Death Of Read More
As COVID-19 spreads in detention, ICE documents shared with NPR reveal new details about the health care provided to two immigrants who died in 2017. Those facilities now face coronavirus outbreaks. Continue Reading Internal ICE Read More
President Trump said he plans to "temporarily suspend immigration into the United States," in an attempt to protect American workers from the coronavirus' economic toll. Continue Reading President Trump Says He’ll Suspend Read More
In February, immigration agents arrested a man the federal government says is a danger to his community of Twisp in Washington’s Methow Valley. That same community fought to get their neighbor back. Continue Read More
The Courts Open To All Act effectively bans immigration enforcement agents from carrying out arrests inside courts and within one mile of state courthouses — unless they have a judicial warrant. Continue Reading Washington Read More
Mohanad Elshieky says Border Patrol agents racially profiled him and held him without cause. The comic, who was granted U.S. asylum in 2018, was on his way home to Portland after a gig in Pullman when the officers confronted him in Spokane. Read More
The United States Department of Justice is suing King County over its ban on deportation flights from Boeing Field. A King County executive order banned deportation flights from Boeing Field in April 2019. Since then, ICE has diverted detainees to and from Yakima airport by bus. Read More
Several hundred advocates from across the Northwest rallied in Olympia Wednesday demanding protections for immigrants in Washington. According to ICE, agents are forced to conduct arrests in courthouses because state law prohibits local agencies from enforcing immigration law or collaborating with federal authorities.
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Nicolas was afraid of setting foot in the Grant County District Court. Members of the community, immigrant advocates and public defenders say they have spotted federal immigration officers arresting undocumented people at the court regularly. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, immigration officers do make arrests in courthouses but only against targeted Read More
The Southern border may be far from Washington state, but software used by immigration officials is built in Seattle. Now tech workers are grappling with their responsibility as the creators of that technology. Some have become unlikely activists. Read More
The hit '90s TV drama is back with a timely twist. Co-creator Amy Lippman and writer Gabriel Llanas talk about creating a show about five Latinx siblings whose parents are deported to Mexico. Continue Reading In Read More
Sixty Iranian-Americans say they were detained at the American border with Canada this weekend, according to CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. Two other attorneys at the border, unrelated to CAIR, made similar observations. Customs and Border Protection denies those reports. Read More
The Department of Homeland Security has finalized an agreement to share records that the Census Bureau says will help it produce data about the citizenship status of every person living in the U.S. Continue Reading To Read More
Daniela Medina is a first-grade teacher in the Kennewick School District — at the same school she found herself in at age six when she and her family immigrated to Washington from Mexico in 2001. The Mid-Columbia Mastersingers are holding concerts January 10, 11 and 12 of music by immigrant composers to tell the stories behind the politics. Read More
U.S. immigration authorities want to increase the fee for obtaining immigration files by 500%, which means some people would have to pay more than $600 for the documents. The move would affect families of the millions of people who immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Read More
The suit filed in U.S. Western District of Washington targets the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, and Customs & Border Protection. The Attorney General's Office said the arrests were made while immigrants entered a courthouse to pay for non-violent, seemingly mundane things; think parking tickets, vehicle tabs, or to file restraining Read More
The report says the administration planned to separate as many as 26,000 children under the "zero tolerance" policy. More than 5,000 children were separated before it was ended by a judge. Continue Reading Government Read More
The Trump administration is asking the court to invalidate the program that temporarily protects from deportation some 700,000 DREAMers who were brought to the country illegally as children. Continue Reading Fate Of DACA Read More
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein on Tuesday denied the department’s effort to make Ignacio Lanuza and his attorneys pay legal fees for his unsuccessful attempt to hold the government liable for the forgery. The fees could have topped $100,000. Read More
Immigrant advocates are denouncing the proposal, arguing that collecting genetic information of border crossers could have implications for family members residing in the U.S. Continue Reading Justice Department Announces Read More
