California and San Francisco officials said on Aug. 14 that they are suing the Trump administration, “alleging federal threats to withhold funding from ‘sanctuary cities’ are unconstitutional and violate the rights of residents,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

This is the second time that the city of San Francisco has taken legal action against the Trump administration over the policy, notes the San Francisco Examiner in an Aug. 14 story.

The recent moves by California and San Francisco follow on the heels of similar action by the city of Chicago.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel “has taken his fight against President Trump’s immigration policies to court,” write Michael Tarm and Sophia Tareen of the Associated Press.

Tarm and Tareen report that Chicago became one of the first cities “to sue the government over what many U.S. cities argue are illegal bids to withhold public safety grants from so-called sanctuary cities.”

In related news, “For the first time since it began extending the detentions of local inmates sought for deportation, Miami-Dade County received word from Washington that it won’t be treated as a community giving “sanctuary” to immigration violators,” writes Douglas Hanks in the Miami Herald.

Hanks reports that An Aug. 4 letter to Mayor Carlos Gimenez from the Justice Department said “there was no evidence” Miami-Dade was out of compliance with an immigration provision of a federal police grant worth about $480,000 this year to the county.

Click here for the full letter.

The Canadian military is building a camp to house the growing number of refugees crossing the US border, BBC News reported on Aug. 9.

“The camp would house up to 500 asylum seekers in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, near Plattsburgh, New York,” the BBC report said.

The construction begins about a week after Montreal turned its Olympic Stadium into a shelter for refugees arriving from the US, the BBC reported.

I recently wrote about a recent New York Times article that detailed the perils facing refugees trying to enter Canada from the U.S.

Writing in the New York Times, Francis Clines describes how immigration lawyer Glenn Formica’s views on immigrants seeking sanctuary in churches have changed in the Trump era (New York Times, Aug. 4, 2017).

The New York Times Arts section recently included an interesting article about a number of children’s books that focus on refugees.

“More than a dozen new and forthcoming titles feature young Muslim refugees as protagonists, ranging from picture books aimed at readers as young as 4 to a cluster of novels for middle and high school students that delve into the murkier aspects of the refugee crisis,” writes New York Times reporter Alexandra Alter.

Click here for the article (NY Times, Aug. 7, 2017).

Legislation proposed by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and David Perdue, R-Ga., would make drastic cuts to the flow of legal immigrants into the U.S.

President Trump supports the measure, which is called the “Reforming American Immigration for Strong Economy” (RAISE) Act.

The proposal would “enact the most far-reaching changes to the system of legal immigration in decades and represents the president’s latest effort to stem the flow of newcomers to the United States” (New York Times, Aug. 2, 2017).

The legislation “seeks to reduce the annual distribution of green cards awarding permanent legal residence to just over 500,000 from more than 1 million” (Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2017).

This BBC article lays out the bill’s specifics.

Statue of Liberty takes center stage at White House briefing

During a briefing at the White House on Aug. related to the legislation, CNN reporter Jim Acosta and Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor in the Trump administration, had a heated exchange about the bill.

Acosta cited the poem on the base of Statue of Liberty which beckons the world’s “tired … poor … huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to America. Acosta asked Miller if the White House was “trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country” (CNN, Aug. 2, 2017).

A profile of Miller in the Atlantic magazine published in early 2017 notes that Miller became associated with the “hardline anti-immigration, anti-globalist views” that characterized then-Sen. Jeff Sessions when Miller worked for Sessions.

The use of tractor-trailers by human smugglers is receiving renewed attention as a result of the recent deaths of 10 immigrants found in the back of an abandoned tractor-trailer in a San Antonio Walmart.

A recent New York Times article details why smugglers have turned to the use of tractor-trailers in recent years and just how dangerous it can be for immigrants.

19 immigrants died in 2003 smuggling operation

Several media reports about the deaths of the immigrants in San Antonio point to similarities involving a smuggling operation that resulted in the death of 19 immigrants in 2003.

In both cases, immigrants were abandoned in the back of a tractor-trailer in sweltering temperatures in Texas.

In 2007, the driver of that tractor-trailer, Tyrone Williams, was sentenced to life in parole for his role in the deaths of the 19 immigrants. In 2011, he was re-sentenced to nearly 34 years in prison.

The driver in the San Antonio case, James Mathew Bradley, Jr., has been accused of knowingly transporting undocumented immigrants, which is a federal crime that can carry the death penalty if it leads to the death of immigrants.

Texas Lieutenant Governor blames sanctuary cities

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that the deaths of the immigrants in San Antonio were the result of sanctuary cities.

In a Facebook post, Patrick wrote: “Sanctuary cities entice people to believe they can come to America and Texas and live outside the law. Sanctuary cities also enable human smugglers and cartels. Today, these people paid a terrible price and demonstrate why we need secure border and legal immigration reform so we can control who enters our country.”

In a sharp rebuke to Patrick, the Austin American Statesman’s editorial board said that the statement lacked “the compassion and respect for human life one would expect from a prominent state leader — especially one governing in Texas with a large Hispanic population and legacy —,” and also “glossed over incontrovertible facts: Sanctuary cities don’t entice immigrants to come to the United States. Jobs do.”

A recent Vox article details how volunteers throughout the U.S. ready to assist refugees are increasingly in limbo as the Trump refugee ban remains in effect. One of the states profiled in the article is Arkansas, a state that went for Trump in the 2016 presidential election by more than 20 points.

Writing in the latest issue of the Atlantic magazine, Peter Beinart argues that Democrats need to change their approach to immigration on a number of fronts including putting immigrants’ learning English at the center of their immigration agenda.

In his piece, “How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration,” Beinart notes that there are several reasons why it would be a mistake for liberals to oppose immigration including that immigration benefits immigrants as well as family members in their countries of origin. He also notes the benefits of immigration for the U.S. economy.

At the same time, he argues that “Liberals must take seriously Americans’ yearning for social cohesion. To promote both mass immigration and greater economic redistribution, they must convince more native-born white Americans that immigrants will not weaken the bonds of national identity. This means dusting off a concept many on the left currently hate: assimilation.”

Since President Trump came into office, some refugees living in the U.S. have decided they would be better off in Canada.

But making that journey can be harrowing and potentially life threatening, as this recent New York Times article details.

The Atlantic earlier this year published a photo essay featuring refugees trying to enter Canada across the U.S. border.

This photo shows a family from Sudan attempting to enter Canada.

(photo credit: Christinne Muschi/Reuters).

And this photo is of a family from Yemen trying to cross the U.S.-Canada border.

(photo credit: Christinne Muschi/Reuters)

Other news coverage includes this Independent (UK) story from earlier this year, which focused on the small Canadian border town of Emerson, which has seen a surge of refugees trying to cross into Canada.