Supreme Court Seems Skeptical of Trump’s Census Plan
U.S. Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Monday that President Donald Trump could categorically exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to allot seats among the states in the House of Representatives. But it also appeared possible that the justices could avoid a final ruling on the issue until they know how broadly the Trump administration acts in its final days in office and whether the division of House seats is affected. No president has tried to do what Trump outlined in a memo in July — remove millions of noncitizens from the once-a-decade head count of the U.S. population that determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, as well as the allocation of some federal funding. The court, meeting by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, heard arguments in its second case in two years related to the 2020 census and immigrants. The census is also facing novel questions over deadlines, data quality and politics, including whether the incoming Biden administration would do anything to try to reverse decisions made under Trump. One possibility outlined by acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer, is that Trump might try to leave out …
Vanderbilt Kicker Becomes First Woman to Play US College Football in Major Conference
Sarah Fuller was playing around with a teammate a couple months ago when she kicked a soccer ball through the uprights from 45 yards away. She joked about being able to kick a football with teammates during the Southeastern Conference soccer tournament.On Saturday, she made history.Fuller became the first woman to participate in a major conference football game when she kicked off for Vanderbilt to start the second half at Missouri, a moment that may take some time to soak in for her.”I just think it’s incredible that I am able to do this, and all I want to do is be a good influence to the young girls out there because there were times that I struggled in sports,” Fuller said. “But I am so thankful I stuck with it, and it’s given me so many opportunities. I’ve met so many amazing people through sports, and I just want to say like literally you can do anything you set your mind to.”Fuller kicked with a holder rather than using a tee in a designed squib kick, and the senior sent a low kick to the 35-yard line where it was pounced on by Missouri’s Mason Pack. Fuller didn’t get …
Cuban American Mayorkas Brings Immigration Experience to DHS
President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been described as a man of few words, direct, and compassionate. Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American and former Obama administration official, would be the first Latino, if confirmed by the Senate, to lead DHS, an agency created after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. It is the third-largest federal agency in the nation. “He’s a man of a few words but he is a man of his words, which is really key and important,” said Gaby Pacheco, director of advocacy, communications, and development for TheDream.US, a nonprofit organization that helps undocumented youths with financial support through college scholarships. Pacheco is a former beneficiary of DACA, the Obama-era program that allows immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. as children without legal status, to remain legally and work and study without fear of deportation. Pacheco met Mayorkas through her DACA advocacy work when he was a top aide with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). “The first time we met with him, he came over to the offices of the National Immigration Forum. … And then after that we would go to USCIS offices and …
US Will Appeal Order Barring Expulsions of Migrant Children
The U.S. government on Wednesday appealed a judge’s order barring the expulsions of immigrant children who crossed the border alone, a policy enacted during the coronavirus pandemic to deny the children asylum protections. Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction on Nov. 18 sought by advocates for immigrants that barred expulsions of unaccompanied children under public health laws. The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal Wednesday night to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It also asked Sullivan to issue a stay of the injunction pending appeal, a request he previously denied. Since March, border agents have expelled 200,000 immigrant adults and children citing the pandemic and a need to prevent the spread of the virus, even though COVID-19 is spreading broadly through border communities and the country at large. Sullivan’s order only covered children who cross the border without a parent and not adults or parents and children. At least 8,800 unaccompanied children have been expelled without having a chance to seek asylum protections or speak to a lawyer. Most people have been expelled within hours or days, though the Trump administration detained hundreds of children for weeks in hotels near the U.S.-Mexico …
Student Journalists on Front Lines of COVID-19 Coverage
College student journalists have been at the forefront of university COVID-19 coverage, breaking news stories about campus outbreaks and holding university leadership accountable for its handling of the pandemic.But COVID-19 has been a challenge for students, too, as many college papers have had to maintain virtual newsrooms, cut back print editions, and struggle to build rapport among their remote teams.Student newspapers have offered a unique inside scoop about how students are navigating the pandemic.“We know of student hospitalizations that the university doesn’t because they have to be self-reported to the university,” said Eli Hoff, managing editor for the University of Missouri’s The Maneater.“And we as students are more likely to get in contact with those people than university administrators can or middle-age town newspapers can because we’re students, they’re students and there’s more of a connection there,” said Hoff.Because they are on the front line of coverage, the responsibility is large, Hoff said.“There’s more of a burden of responsibility on us as student journalists to be on the ground for whatever reporting we can and being the first to get that kind of information just because we have access to it. It kind of falls to us to report it,” …
US Agrees – For Now – To Stop Deporting Women Who Alleged Abuse
The U.S. government has agreed temporarily not to deport detained immigrant women who have alleged being abused by a rural Georgia gynecologist, according to court papers filed Tuesday. In a motion that must still be approved by a federal judge, the Justice Department and lawyers for several of the women agreed that immigration authorities would not carry out any deportations until mid-January. Dozens of women have alleged that they were mistreated by Dr. Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist who was seeing patients from the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is investigating as well. Amin has denied any wrongdoing through his lawyer. Several women say they have faced retaliation by immigration authorities for coming forward. One woman has said that hours after she spoke to investigators, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement notified her that it had lifted a hold on her deportation. Another woman was taken to an airport to be placed on a deportation flight before her lawyers could intervene. The agreement filed in court Tuesday proposes that no deportations would take place until at least mid-January for women who have “substantially similar …
Colleges Closing Quickly as COVID-19 Cases Rise
As the Thanksgiving holiday looms, more colleges and universities in the United States continue to abruptly shut down their campuses for the remainder of the fall semester because of increased COVID-19 cases across the country. At the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdown last spring, colleges and universities scrambled to respond to the pandemic and keep students safe. A George Mason University (GMU) study found that three-quarters of 575 colleges with more than 5,000 students had moved courses online, discouraged campus housing, canceled travel, closed campuses, and worked remotely. That study, published October 16, analyzed actions colleges had made between February 25 and March 31. “Spring break was this wonderful opportunity that just happened to be occurring at the right time that gave universities the bandwidth to be able to transition relatively smoothly for the spring,” said Michael von Fricken, an assistant professor at GMU who worked on the study FILE – A passer-by departs a gate to the campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I., Oct. 12, 2020. Brown has suspended in-person instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Universities have had to adjust again for the fall semester and rising numbers of COVID-19 cases. In the past few weeks, many universities have …
Report: Mobile Fingerprinting a Core Tool in US Deportations
A mobile fingerprinting app U.S. immigration agents use to run remote ID checks in the field has become a core tool in President Donald Trump’s deportation crackdown, a pair of immigration rights groups say in a new report based on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The 2,500 pages of documents obtained through the 2017 lawsuit show that the app, known as EDDIE, has helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ramp up deportations of migrants not intentionally targeted for removal, the report states. Such people are often detained in operations aimed at others, the activists say in Monday’s report. They say that field use of the app exacerbates racial profiling in immigrant communities. For instance, an internal agency newsletter released with the documents described immigration agents using the app during traffic stops in collaboration with local police in Escondido, California, in 2017. That report credited the operation with “333 illegal alien arrests” in a 12-month period, although it provided scant additional context. Used routinely by U.S. immigration and border agents, mobile fingerprinting figures into the collection of biometric data that the Trump administration is seeking to broadly expand in its final weeks. A regulation proposed by the Department of Homeland Security on September …
US Rhodes Scholars Chosen Virtually for 1st Time
The U.S. Rhodes Scholars for 2021 were elected virtually this year for the first time as the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, though that didn’t extinguish enthusiasm among the 32 students who won scholarships to Oxford University.The Rhodes Trust announced the winners early Sunday, which include 22 students of color. Ten are Black, which ties the record for the most Black students elected in a single year. Nine are first-generation Americans or immigrants, according to the Rhodes Trust press release. Shera Avi-Yonah, a 22-year-old Harvard University student, said she found out about her win Saturday night while she was sitting in her parents’ basement in Lincoln, Massachusetts.”A wave of gratitude washed over me,” Avi-Yonah said, adding that she ran upstairs to tell her parents. “I’m going to have a very happy Thanksgiving.”The winners were chosen from a pool of more than 2,300 applicants — of which 953 were endorsed by 288 different colleges and universities. Created in 1902 by the will of Cecil Rhodes, the financier and statesman of British South Africa, the scholarship available to U.S. college graduates provides all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England. Avi-Yonah is planning …
China-Sensitive Topics at US Universities Draw More Online Harassment
Last week, students at Brandeis University hosted an online discussion about China’s controversial Xinjiang policies, hearing experts discuss the detention, abuse and political indoctrination of more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.But as Uighur attorney and advocate Rayhan Asat appeared before the student group last Friday, her screen was taken over as hackers wrote “fake news” and “liar” on it.For some participants, the hacking was unwelcome but unsurprising.James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and a prominent Xinjiang scholar, told VOA that the group had been warned about a potential interruption beforehand.He said some letters had been written to the Brandeis president, the faculty adviser of the student who organized the panel, and the Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion to shut down the panel.“The letter said that it was damaging or disturbing to Chinese students to discuss issues going on in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” Millward said.Still, other experts said it fit with an increase in more organized harassment against topics on American campuses seen as objectionable by the Chinese government.Chinese Students and Scholars AssociationThe Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on the Muslim minorities in Xinjiang has attracted intense scrutiny and polarized the international community. At least 1 …
Millennial Life: Eat, Sleep, Work, Screens
Would you give up nearly a decade of your life looking at your cellphone?Calculated by today’s usage, the average person spends a little over 76,500 hours – or 8.74 years – on a smartphone over a lifetime, according to a FILE – Marilu Rodriguez checks a news website on her smartphone before boarding a train home at the end of her workweek in Chicago, March 13, 2015.This widespread usage of smartphones has sparked worries among teens themselves, with 54% of U.S. teens saying they spend too much time on their phones. And 52% have also reported trying to take steps to reduce mobile phone use. A JAMA Network study found that only 5% of 59,397 U.S. high school students surveyed spent a balanced time sleeping and staying physically active while limiting screen time.Too much time on a phone has been linked to a number of physical and mental health risks.In a study of 3,826 adolescents, researchers found an association between social media and television use with symptoms of depression, according to JAMA Pediatrics.Increased screen time has also been linked with a higher risk of obesity and diabetes. …
Biden Expected to Reverse Many of Trump’s Immigration Policies
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s landmark immigration policies after he takes office next year. Though untangling some immigration guidelines most likely will take time, Biden has vowed to reverse limits on temporary workers, loosen visa restrictions on international students, halt border wall construction and end private immigration detention centers.As VOA recently reported, Biden is expected to prioritize restoring DACA — an Obama-era program that protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation — rescind travel restrictions on 13 countries and put in place a 100-day freeze on deportations while his administration issues new guidance.Temporary workers and international studentsWhen it comes to temporary workers and international students, where H-1B and F-1 visas allow nonimmigrants to live and work temporarily in the U.S. under certain conditions, experts said they believed the new president would overturn some of the restrictions implemented in the last four years.But Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization in Washington that researches immigration policy, noted that immigration matters might not be at the top of Biden’s to-do list during a pandemic that continues to inflict economic damage.”A lot of legal immigration …
Judge Orders US to Stop Expelling Children Who Cross Border
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to stop expelling immigrant children who cross the southern border alone, halting a policy that has resulted in thousands of rapid deportations of minors during the coronavirus pandemic.U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction sought by legal groups suing on behalf of children whom the government sought to expel before they could request asylum or other protections under federal law.The Trump administration has expelled at least 8,800 unaccompanied children since March, when it issued an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus as grounds for barring most people crossing the border from remaining in the United States.Border agents have forced many people to return to Mexico right away, while detaining others in holding facilities or hotels, sometimes for days or weeks. Meanwhile, government-funded facilities meant to hold children while they are placed with sponsors have thousands of unused beds.Sullivan’s order bars only the expulsion of children who cross the border unaccompanied by a parent. The government has expelled more than 147,000 people since March, including adults, and parents and children traveling together.”This policy was sending thousands of young children back to danger without any hearing,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for …
Wealthy California Couple Receive Prison Terms in College Admissions Scandal
A wealthy California couple was sentenced to prison time on Tuesday after admitting they paid $250,000 to fraudulently help their daughter gain admission to the University of Southern California as a volleyball recruit.Diane Blake, the co-founder of a retail merchandising company, and Todd Blake, an entrepreneur and investor, were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston to six weeks and to four months in prison, respectively.They are among 57 people charged in relation to a vast scheme in which wealthy parents conspired with California college admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer to fraudulently secure spots for their children at universities.Singer pleaded guilty in 2019 to facilitating cheating on college entrance exams and using bribery to secure the admission of students to selective universities as fake athletic recruits.The parents include “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman, who received a 14-day prison sentence, and “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin, who was sentenced to two months in prison.During a virtual hearing, Gorton also ordered the Blakes to each pay a $125,000 fine. The judge, who has sentenced eight other parents, said the case “boggles the mind.””I remain unable to understand the misguided and warped thinking that resulted in the commission of this crime,” …
More Universities to Close After Thanksgiving
As COVID-19 cases surge around the U.S., more universities and colleges plan to move all classes online after Thanksgiving break in late November, while others say they will allow students to return to campus. FILE – Students wait in line at a testing site for the COVID-19 set up for returning students, faculty and staff on the main campus of New York University (NYU) in Manhattan in New York City, Aug. 18, 2020.”By requiring all students to test negative before leaving, we are implementing a smart, sensible policy that protects students’ families and hometown communities and drastically reduces the chances of COVID-19 community spread,” said SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras in a press release. Indiana University (IU) will require its 48,514 students to have exit testing as they head home for the Thanksgiving break. Last week (November 11), some IU students were suspended for celebrating in the streets after a football win. The week before, the university shut down its Delta Upsilon fraternity house through summer 2021, for hosting a large, unmasked Halloween party.“Students will leave a state with skyrocketing new COVID-19 cases and some might sit next to grandparents a few days later,” tweeted Matt Cohen, enterprise reporter for the Indiana Daily …
Former Harvard Coach, Dad Charged in Latest Admission Scheme
A former Harvard University fencing coach and a Maryland businessman have been arrested and charged with conspiring to circumvent the school’s admissions process, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston.Peter Brand, 67, a former Harvard fencing coach who was fired in 2019, is alleged to have taken more than $1.5 million in bribes to get the sons of Maryland businessman Jie “Jack” Zhao, 61, into Harvard by recruiting them to the school’s fencing team.In 2013, Zhao, who runs a telecommunications company, allegedly donated more than $1 million to a fencing charity run by Brand. That same year, one of Zhao’s sons was accepted to Harvard.The second son gained admission in 2017.”In total, Zhao made $1.5 million in payments to Brand, or for Brand’s personal benefit, even as Brand recruited Zhao’s younger son to the Harvard fencing team,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”Zhao allegedly paid for Brand’s car, made college tuition payments for Brand’s son, paid the mortgage on Brand’s Needham, Massachusetts, residence, and later purchased the residence for well above its market value, thus allowing Brand to purchase a more expensive residence in Cambridge that Zhao then paid to renovate,” the news release stated.“This …
New International Student Enrollment Falls 43% in the US
COVID-19 has drastically cut international student participation in U.S. colleges and universities, punctuating three years of declining enrollment tied to costs, immigration barriers and perceived chaos in American society.Fewer Foreign Students Enrolling in US College and UniversitiesAnnual Open Doors report of international students in US shows increase in total international enrollment from previous year, but a decrease in new international student enrollmentIn the school year that began three months ago, new enrollment of international students dropped 43% because of COVID-19. Nearly 40,000 students — mostly incoming freshmen — have deferred enrollment at 90% of U.S. institutions to a future term. The data were compiled and reported by the Institute for International Education and published in its annual Open Doors report about international students in the U.S. It is funded by the U.S. Department of State, which issues visas to students and visitors participating in educational or vocational training. “The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted international student enrollment,” IIE report stated. “Many international students studying at U.S. institutions took advantage of opportunities to begin their studies remotely.” Of the more than 1 million enrolled international students in the U.S., 20% turned to online learning this semester because of COVID-19 campus shutdowns. While some international students returned to their home countries, others are living off-campus or under strict guidelines on campus. COVID-19 emerged …
Federal Judge: Wolf’s DACA Rules Invalid
A federal judge in New York ruled Saturday that Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, could not suspend a program that shields from deportation people who were brought to the country illegally as children because he was not lawfully appointed.Last July, Wolf wrote a memo launching a review of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In addition to rejecting new applications during that time, his agency would allow current participants to renew their status and work permits for only one year instead of the previous two-year periods.However, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled Saturday that “DHS failed to follow the order of succession as it was lawfully designated. Therefore, the actions taken by purported Acting Secretaries, who were not properly in their roles according to the lawful order of succession, were taken without legal authority.”FILE – Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf is sworn in before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 23, 2020.Garaufis cited a Government Accountability Office report to Congress in August that found that Wolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were improperly serving and ineligible to …
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