Administration maintains refugee cap it hugely missed in fiscal year 2022—10-03-22
Immigration news, in context
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This week’s edition:
In The Big Picture, we examine the administration’s decision to maintain last fiscal year’s refugee cap for this fiscal year, and what that actually means in practice.
In Under the Radar, we look at The New York Times’ latest story on the stunt deceiving migrants into boarding flights for Martha’s Vineyard, which unmasks the shadow “Perla” figure at the center of it.
In Next Destination, we discuss an upcoming Supreme Court case involving a transgender Guatemalan asylum seeker.
The Big Picture
The news: President Joe Biden has officially communicated to Congress that he is keeping the current refugee cap of 125,000 in place for the federal fiscal year 2023, which officially began on Saturday. The decision signals an on-paper continuing commitment to a high level of humanitarian resettlements, much larger than what became the norm under President Donald Trump and twice the level that Biden instituted for the remainder of fiscal year 2021, after he took office. Yet things have been much different in practice—Biden’s government has yet to come close to these caps.
While the president has pretty absolute authority to set these numbers, they are merely limitations, not targets. To actually reach them, there needs to be an entire public-private infrastructure, one that for a couple reasons has deteriorated to the point that it is unable to keep up. The modern refugee system has been in place since 1980, and always relied on a certain cooperation between agencies and nonprofits, as well as a political will to execute.
There is certainly a vast need for refugee resettlement around the globe right now, with the obvious examples of Afghanistan, where the U.S. played a direct role, and Ukraine. So far, the government has resettled these populations (one latter noticeably more urgently than the former) with stopgap measures like humanitarian parole.
Under the Radar
New York Times identifies woman who lured Venezuelan asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard
One of the strangest elements of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s scheme to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard was a woman known only as “Perla,” who was responsible for convincing 48 migrants to get on the planes. The New York Times has identified that woman as Perla Huerta, a former counterintelligence agent who spent more than twenty years in the U.S. Army.
Huerta recruited a Venezuelan migrant to help her lure other asylum seekers onto the flight. The man, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Times that he felt betrayed because Huerta never mentioned she was working with the Florida government and framed the flights as a way to help asylum seekers.
DeSantis’s stunt is now being investigated for potentially violating Florida law. Earlier this year, the state allocated $12 million to a fund to transport migrants out of Florida—but the people flown to Martha’s Vineyard never actually set foot in the state. The planes that transported the migrants from San Antonio, Texas to Martha’s Vineyard did make quit pit stops in Florida, but the asylum seekers hadn’t actually attempted to go to the state themselves. Moreover, the charter airline company that handled the flights has ties to both DeSantis and his ally, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.
Next Destination
SCOTUS to take up transgender asylum seeker case
The Supreme Court has accepted a writ of certiorari in Santos-Zacaria v. Garland, a case involving a transgender asylum seeker from Guatemala who appealed her asylum denial with the Board of Immigration Appeals. An immigration judge initially denied her applications for withholding of removal and for relief under the Convention Against Torture, ruling that sexual assault she had experienced at the age of 12 didn’t sufficiently establish that she had been persecuted. Santos appealed the case to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the appellate body for the immigration adjudication system, which dismissed the appeal.
Santos’s initial denial of status hinged on the immigration judge’s determination that she would not be targeted or persecuted for her sexuality or gender identity if she relocated within Guatemala. The judge asserted that although she faced persecution before, there are LGBTQ people in Guatemala who do not, and therefore she could safely return to the country.