When the chaos of a 24/7 news cycle drowns out life, what do you do?
G. Wayne Miller
May 4, 2018
“I had a choice to re-enter national politics and thus get back on the 24-hour carousel of social media and outrage, but for my health and happiness, I decided that wasn’t my path,” Domenzain said. “I needed to get out of the 24-hour national news cycle and into a community where results were at our reach.” And thus, she came to Rhode Island, where today she heads Roger Williams University’s Latino Policy Institute.
RHODE ISLAND DEVELOPMENTS
Census officials say Rhode Island rehearsal is going well. Not everyone agrees.
Michael Wines / New York Times
April 28, 2018
The administration’s decision to add the citizenship question came too late to add to the test run in Providence. In his testimony, Dr. Jarmin estimated that including the question on the 2020 census form would cause a less than 1 percent increase in the number of people who fail to respond to the survey […] “We’re hearing from all kinds of people across the county that they’re afraid to respond,” Marisa O’Gara, the deputy chief of staff to Mayor Jorge O. Elorza, said in an interview. “They don’t know if the citizenship question is added to the test or not, but the assumption from a lot of people is that it is, so they don’t even want to bother responding.”
Pittsburgh joins lawsuit with Central Falls to block immigration census question
Stacey Federoff / Pittsburgh Business Times
May 2, 2018
The City of Pittsburgh has joined 18 states and the District of Columbia, nine cities and four counties in a lawsuit to block citizenship questions on the 2020 U.S. Census. Originally filed last month, Pittsburgh has joined the complaint along with Colorado; Central Falls, Rhode Island; Columbus, Ohio; Cameron County, Texas; El Paso County, Texas; Hidalgo County, Texas; and Monterey County, Calif.; as co-plaintiffs.
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
Trump administration ends protections for 50,000 Hondurans living in U.S. since 1999
Nick Miroff / Washington Post
May 4, 2018
More than 50,000 Hondurans who have been allowed to live and work in the United States since 1999 will have 20 months to leave the country or face deportation, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Friday, the latest in a series of DHS measures aimed at tightening U.S. immigration controls […] Last November, DHS ended TPS for 2,500 Nicaraguans who were also allowed to stay after Hurricane Mitch. Hondurans were the second-largest group of TPS recipients after Salvadorans, and many have lived most of their adult lives in the United States, running businesses, purchasing homes and raising American-born children.
Fatal encounters: 97 deaths point to pattern of border agent violence across America
Sarah Macaraeg / The Guardian
May 2, 2018
For six long years the family of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez have been caught in a legal saga seeking justice for the 16-year-old who was killed by a US border patrol agent who fired 16 times from Arizona into Mexico. Ending criminal proceedings that have dragged on since 2012, a jury last week cleared agent Lonnie Swartz of second-degree murder and could not agree on a verdict for two lesser charges of manslaughter […] The shootings are only part of a larger litany of Customs and Border Protection agency-related violence inside the US. Encounters have proven deadly for at least 97 people – citizens and non-citizens – since 2003, a count drawn from settlement payment data, court records, use of force logs, incident reports and news articles.
7 states sue to end DACA, potentially jumbling its legal future
Tal Kopan / CNN
May 1, 2018
The future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program got murkier Tuesday when the Texas attorney general made good on a threat to challenge it in court. The lawsuit throws a wrench in an already-complicated legal morass for the DACA program, which protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children and which President Donald Trump has been blocked from ending, for the time being, by other federal courts.
Government challenges order banning DACA revocations
Laura D. Francis / Bloomberg BNA
April 27, 2018
The Trump administration is appealing another adverse ruling related to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The Justice Department wants the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review of a February decision that ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop automatically terminating immigrants’ DACA protections when they receive a “notice to appear” in removal proceedings. More than 400 DACA recipients have since been identified as having lost their protections in this manner.
U.S. lets a few members of a migrant caravan apply for asylum
Kirk Semple / New York Times
April 30, 2018
Several members of the Latin American migrant caravan that has enraged President Trump were allowed to step onto United States territory to apply for asylum late Monday, ending a border standoff that had lasted more than a day and marking the beginning of the final chapter of the group’s monthlong odyssey. Shortly after 7 p.m. local time, eight migrants who, like most of the caravan’s participants, said they were fleeing violence in their homeland, passed through the metal gate separating Tijuana from San Diego, entered the immigration checkpoint and began the process to petition for sanctuary, caravan organizers said. The contingent that was admitted included four children and three women — the children’s mothers — and an 18-year-old man. The organizers said they did not know whether more of the migrants would be permitted to enter Monday night.
Study tackles issues of Latino college access, completion
Lois Elfman / Diverse Education
April 30, 2018
Utilizing in-depth interviews with Latino college graduates from six U.S. cities, UnidosUS collaborated with the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to present a report examining issues of access, affordability and long-term success. According to the report, titled “It Made the Sacrifices Worth It: The Latino Experience in Higher Education,” the rate of enrollment in higher education for Latinos ages 18 to 24 has increased by 15 percentage points from 24 percent to 39 percent over the past decade […] Despite this optimistic statistic, Latino students are still falling short in completion. “Latino students are facing unique challenges and they’re not faring as well as their peers in the post-secondary space,” said Vargas Poppe. “We wanted to make sure that stakeholders have the information needed to create a system that better serves all students.”
A Big Providence Tax Battle Could Be Looming Proposed changes to the Providence residential and commercial real estate tax structures are making their...
