It also looks at all cachet, just not federal cachet, but state or local cash assistance programs and barring some of them getting a green card or entering the United States. It English Proficiency as a positive factor or lack of proficiency has a negative factor. It would look at medical conditions, whether or not they have private Health Insurance and whether or not theyve ever used a fee waiver to waive a filing fee for past immigration application. It would also allow to potentially overcome a public charge determination if they pay a bond, the minimum amount of which would be 8,100. The rule will not take effect until midoctober, until that time, all pending green card applications and those that are postmarked before that date, october 15, 2019 will be adjudicated under what our current standards for public charge. As i mentioned, under existing policy, the only programs i look at our federal cachet that people receive, and whether or not they are in long term institutionalized care. For use of publicly funded health care, nutrition housing programs are not currently considered programs that would affect someones ability to get a green card or enter the United States. These are very drastic changes from longstanding policy that have been around for a couple of decades. Although there are many changes proposed under this new rule, some remain unchanged. Public charge does not impact who is eligible for Public Benefits. In other words those individuals, immigrants and their family members receiving Public Benefits may continue to receive Public Benefits. Many immigrants are not subject to public charge i remain unaffected by the current or the new rule, this includes a site refugees, people who already have green cards, applying for a new visa, unaccompanied minors, visa holders and applicants applying for special immigrant juvenile status, victims of human trafficking, abuse by the u. S. Citizen or lawful permanent family member. Those are individuals not subject to this new rule. Many government funded services are safe to use and will not cause any immigration harm. Those include programs like free and reduced school lunch, emergency medical, disaster relief, head, et cetera. Nonetheless, the damage of these proposed policies has been done in many communities weve already seen large scale disenrollment by immigrants who fear they could be impacted. Our advice to immigrant families now is if they are concerned that public charge could apply to them, they should seek the help of Legal Services expert who can help them do an individualized assessment of their situation. As i mentioned many people are not impacted by this at all and are not subject to it at all. For those who may be impacted they consider applying before october 15 and the new rule goes into effect. Keep in mind that the new rule may not go into effect them because of pending lawsuits. We are working with the San Francisco office of Civic Engagement to schedule a number of trainings of Human Service agencies staff as well as education and outreach providers and the Legal Services providers we hope will receive those individual questions and request for help. That is my quick update. I dont know if you have time for questions . We can make time for one or two. Im going to defer to our human right commission, is there anybody on this commission that has questions . Hearing none. I understand we are working with providers to communicate that might be implicated by the changes. I wonder to what extent we are having conversations with city providers, where other departments that directly to enrollment or disenrollment to see if there can be preventative steps before someone does and rolls to make sure they are adequately informed around whether or not there implicated by public charge before they make a decision that may not be the right decision for them. We are leaning on our county partners to help us with a large scale outreach effort to let people know they may not be impacted and they should not disenroll from safety net programs that are critical to the health and wellbeing of their families. We look for the support of any county agencies, schools, benefit programs et cetera that are the first line of contact for a lot of these families. To help share information. We have an Educational Outreach toolkit that we can share with talking points in multiple languages. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you very much. You are always the expert upon whom we called, so we think you for being such an educator and the support of our immigrant communities. Thank you for being here. The next item is special testimony and impacts of the water crisis. Weve had several speakers to advise us on the border crisis on the asylumseekers in the bay area. Our first speaker, is tom wong, u. S. Director at the university of california san diego. Unfortunately, tom wong is ill and has advised he is not able to advise us. We will get a quick overview of tom wongs presentation. Thank you. Commissioners, this is just a quick snapshot of what professor wong is going to share with you. He has published several reports on immigrant issues. This new report is entitled seeking asylum part one, and it is based on the work of the San Diego Rapid Response Network down at the border. It was an analysis of over 7,000 asylum seeking families totaling 17,000 people and just that one area, including 7900 children who were five years or younger, and the conclusion from their data and part one makes it clear that we are failing to treat people humanely, and conditions and detentions may be worse than anyone thought. Moreover, part two of his research will be released next month indicates that this will focus on interviews with asylumseekers who have been returned to mexico, under the migrant protection protocols. It is much worse for them. Doctor wong asked us to share some quick highlights of the reports key findings. Number one experiences in immigration detention, over one out of every three, or about 35 of the asylum seeking has reported issues related to conditions in detention. Among those who reported the issues were related to food, and water, including frozen or spoiled foods, not having enough to eat, not being given formula for infants for their survival, not being given water, and having to drink dirty water among those who reported issues in immigration detention, nearly 35 reported issues related to hygiene, not being able to shower, dirty bathrooms, not having a toothbrush or toothpaste to brush their teeth among other things. By the way their personal belongings are confiscated from them before they are detained. Even if they brought those items they are not allowed to use it. Others report 45. 6 issues related to not being able to sleep, overcrowded conditions, confinement and the temperature being too cold in the area. They were also subject to a lot of verbal abuse, including being told to go back to your. [bleep] country, you are an ape, a mu mug among other things such of them. Reporting physical abuse, including being thrown against a wall. Eighteen reported having their physical property stolen, and of course those who needed medical assistance, and were not provided. Also its interesting to note, in conclusion, of the families that were assisted by the San Diego Rapid Response Network, they came from 28 Different Countries of all regions in the world. You heard jen mentioned that they are not just from one area, the majority come from the northern triangle countries of guatemala, honduras and el salvador. Other countries include haiti, mexico, vietnam and india. Some of the results may be surprising to you, and of course the heads of households spoke, many different languages, over 36 different primary languages for the asylum seeking heads of households, whose primary language was not english and it was not spanish. The Detention Centers gave 87. 9 , or 88 were given the instructions about their Immigration Court dates by immigration officials, on their notice to appear, in spanish, even though they were not spanish speakers. Of the asylum seeking heads of households primary language, is an indigenous Central American language, only. 6 were given instructions about their court dates in a language, other than spanish. Those are just some highlights of the report. The report may be accessed online, and we will share onli online. It is a real long length. We will share that with those offices, make that Available Online for you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It sends chills down everyones spines to know that that is happening to asylumseekers when they are in detention. Do pass on our greetings to professor wong. As he moved to our invited speakers, im going to ask if you have any questions that we hold them to the end. We have four additional speakers, and then each commission will come to your respective chair for any questions or comments. I am going to ask that they be questions, not statements. We do not have time for statements this evening because we have a lot of people. Our next invited speaker is from carecen, and it is lariza dugancuadra. I am a senior immigration attorney of the Central American resource center, carecen. Carecen was founded 33 years a ago, from the sanctuary. It was immigrant lead, and it is an organization that serves migrants, all migrants, if we can serve them in english or spanish. I am going to just give a brief overview, from a Legal Services perspective of what is happeni happening, at the border, and then talk about what carecen does on the ground here. If we were to compare numbers of people arriving at the border today, as compared to ten years ago there might be a lower number, but we are seeing more families, more children who are fleeing violent conditions especially from Central America. There may be more asylumseekers in those numbers. Basically the United States government and the mexican government, at this time have effectively been working together to move the southern border to the southern border of mexico, with the goal of stopping people there, and, if people do make it to our border, there are some efforts by the administration to attempt to change laws and regulations to also stop asylumseekers to getting access to asylum. You might have heard about some of them, because the changes have been announced, and then usually very quickly there have been litigation cases to challenge those. I just want to review quickly three of them. One of them is the asylum third country which is the attempt to say if and asylumseekers are processed or another country before getting to our border, that they would not be able to seek assignment here if they had not attempted to seek asylum in the country they have passed through. There are some exceptions to that, that is the general idea. That is not in effect, because its that was the injunction that happened in San Francisco that was said to be nationwide. It then became limited to just the borders within the ninth circuit. Today was, again, made nationwide by a San Francisco judge. That is the District Court judge. There is another type of ban on asylumseekers which was an attempt to say that if a person didnt come to a port of entry, so they came somewhere other than where immigration officials were, they would not be able to ask for asylum. That is also the Third Program that has already been mentioned, they remain in mexico, or the mpp program. It has not been joint, but it was not conjoined. That means that, at this time, right now, when someone comes to the border to seek asylum, in not a very defined way, they may be not allowed to enter the United States or they may be required to stay mexico. I am saying there is not a definable difference, sometimes even members of one family may be sent to, or allowed to enter the u. S. , and other members of the same family may be required to leave mexico. The numbers that i have are from a couple of weeks ago, but over 37,000 people, and that means people who are seeking asylum, but in order to gain access to the court here in the u. S. , basically there Detention Center is mexico, they are there. And only 1 of those people are represented so, there is a certain sense of unpredictability, of who will be required to stay mexico, and there is a level of desperation, because it is the difficulty representing someone from another country in the United States. What does this mean for people who are at the border . It means that there are camps where people are living, hardly any work, it is not safe, there is no school, there is an extended period of limbo. It began at one port of entry, and has expanded to other in terms of the Legal Services that are available to people, there is an organization that provides Legal Services in tijuana. An example of how this works, there is very dedicated staff there, and there are volunteers that go. There is two trips coming up in september for volunteer attorneys through the American Immigration lawyers association. What it looks like it is 12 attorneys will be there for two weeks. If you can imagine the numbers of people who are there needing services, they will be working, night and day to represent as many people as they can. I say represent and i misspoke. What i meet mean as is meet with people, orient them, because it is going to be a triage situation of what you need to know and how can we help you. The Legal Services will never reach everyone, the Legal Services that are there. The policy needs to be stopped, that is what needs to happen. Carecen is a plaintiff in the litigation that is ongoing, and you might wonder why we are the plaintiffs, as a Legal Services provider in the bay area, our work is to help families reunite and to work for people who are asylumseekers, so our very work is affected, as well as our ability to serve, our clients normally is affected. If we do have a case, which we do have one pro bono case. Very resource intensive, and terms of representing someone and meeting with them in mexico, or san diego, and attending courts, and working on them. So, i know that there will be attorneys who become pro bono attorneys, its just a drop in the bucket. How it affects San Francisco . There may be families that are separated because of these programs. I would just give you one example that in a recent consultation, a colleague of mine was with the father, husband and father in the office in San Francisco and they were awaiting a phone call from his wife. They were expecting to be advising, to be coordinating on how a bond would be paid for her release. Instead she said no im already back in mexico. It was just a devastating moment that shows their family expectation was crushed he was overcome. It was unexpected, and it was also he thought they would not be able to stay mexico and survive. He thought they might return to guatemala because they would be more at peace dying there than in mexico. Carecen is an organization that sees consultations meaning we have an opendoor policy and we see people every day. Because of that level of interaction with the community we meet with people, and we also have the type of services that are social services, as well as Legal Services. Part of the social safety net that San Francisco provides for immigrant families. When you are immigration Legal Services as part of the health benefit. So many people are extremely stressed about keeping their families together. So, if we can take care of their legal needs, sometimes they can do better focusing on Mental Health, housing, jobs and other needs that they have. The social workers that work at carecen have definitely communicated that Immigration Services are high on the list of what the Services People come to them in need. We also believe that it is not recent immigrants that are wanting to respond to this need, but other san franciscans, and our community at large, does not want to lead people out in the we believe that working on solutions and helping to respond to this crisis can help the ci city. I want to recognize friending for Legal Service providers, part of that is through the San Francisco immigrant Legal Defense collaborative. Some of you have the annual report from last year regarding from the collaborative, there has also been funding through the public defender, we greatly appreciate this level of support of the city has given to the need for Legal Service of. The way that that looks, how it looks is more attorneys to help people. Also the sfusd collaborative means we can meet together, respond, and act. Some of our partners have worked together on litigation, on impact litigation. The other aspect of this that comes about, is not just director of presentation but Technical Assistance from organizations like the center for gender and refugee studies. These are excellent local experts who work so hard to help all of the Legal Service providers when they need extra help in understanding the nuances in