 |
Esther Olavarria | |
|---|---|
| Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Immigration | |
| Assumed office January 20, 2021 | |
| President | Joe Biden |
| Leader | Susan Rice |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1962 (age 61–62)[ citation needed ] Cuba |
| Education | University of Florida (BA),(JD) |
Esther Olavarria is a Cuban American attorney. Born in Cuba,she emigrated to the United States in 1962 with her family.
Esther Olavarria has worked in the immigration and refugee field for decades at nonprofit organizations and in the federal government. She began her career as an immigration attorney in Miami,Florida,working at various non-profit organizations representing asylum seekers and immigrants. Between 1986 and 1998 she was a staff attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center,co-founder and managing attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center,and on staff with Legal Services of Greater Miami as directing attorney with the American Immigration Lawyer Pro Bono Project. Moving to Washington,DC in 1998,she served for as Senator Edward Kennedy's immigration counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee,where she worked on a broad range of initiatives,including common sense immigration reform. Joining the Obama administration in 2009,Esther served in senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security and the White House Domestic Policy Council,where she helped craft administrative and legislative initiatives. She has also worked for the Immigration Hub,the Center for American Progress and the UNHCR,the UN Refugee Agency.
In November 2020,Olavarria was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Department of Homeland Security. [1]
She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Florida in 1983 and her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Florida Levin College of Law in 1986. Currently,Olavarria is an independent consultant in Washington,DC.
Olavarria was featured in the documentary series How Democracy Works Now:Twelve Stories from filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini. A version of the film premiered on HBO in March 2010,under the title "The Senator's Bargain".
Other films she appears in through the series include:
Elián González Brotons is a Cuban industrial engineer and politician who,as a young child,became embroiled in an international custody and immigration controversy in 2000 involving the governments of Cuba and the United States,his father Juan Miguel González Quintana,his other relatives in Cuba and in Miami,and Miami's Cuban community.
Operation Peter Pan was a clandestine exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors ages 6 to 18 to the United States over a two-year span from 1960 to 1962. They were sent after parents feared that Fidel Castro and the Communist party were planning to terminate parental rights and place minors in alleged "communist indoctrination centers",commonly referred to as the Patria Potestad.
The Mariel boatlift was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and October 31,1980. The term "Marielito" is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English. While the exodus was triggered by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy,it followed on the heels of generations of Cubans who had immigrated to the United States in the preceding decades.
Cuban Americans are Americans who immigrated from or are descended from immigrants from Cuba,regardless of racial or ethnic origin. As of 2023,Cuban Americans were the third largest Hispanic and Latino American group in the United States after Mexican Americans and Stateside Puerto Ricans.
The Border Protection,Anti-terrorism,and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 was a bill in the 109th United States Congress. It was passed by the United States House of Representatives on December 16,2005,by a vote of 239 to 182,but did not pass the Senate. It was also known as the "Sensenbrenner Bill," for its sponsor in the House of Representatives,Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner. The bill was the catalyst for the 2006 U.S. immigration reform protests and was the first piece of legislation passed by a house of Congress in the United States illegal immigration debate. Development and the effect of the bill was featured in "The Senate Speaks",Story 11 in How Democracy Works Now:Twelve Stories a documentary series from filmmaking team Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini.
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 was a bill discussed in the 110th United States Congress that would have provided legal status and a path to citizenship for the approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. The bill was portrayed as a compromise between providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and increased border enforcement:it included funding for 300 miles (480 km) of vehicle barriers,105 camera and radar towers,and 20,000 more Border Patrol agents,while simultaneously restructuring visa criteria around high-skilled workers. The bill also received heated criticism from both sides of the immigration debate.
Nilda Pedrosa was an American politician in the Republican party and the acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs of the United States Department of State,from September 28,2020,until a few days before her death in January 2021. She was formerly a policy advocate and the Assistant Dean for Development &External Affairs at Florida International University College of Law.
Cecilia Muñoz is an American political advisor who served as Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Obama,a position she held for five years. Prior to that,she served as the White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for three years.
Frank Sharry is the founder and executive director of America's Voice,a liberal immigration reform group.
Sarah J. Mahler is an American author and cultural anthropologist. She was part of a group of anthropologists attempting to change migration studies to a more comprehensive way to understand how migrants crossing international borders remain tied to their homelands and how cultural practices and identities reflect influences from past and present contexts,called "transnational migration."
Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas is an American lawyer and politician serving since 2021 as the seventh United States Secretary of Homeland Security. During the Obama administration,he also served in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),first as director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (2009–2013),and as deputy secretary of DHS (2013–2016).
Freedom Flights transported Cubans to Miami twice daily,five times per week from 1965 to 1973. Its budget was about $12 million and it brought an estimated 300,000 refugees,making it the "largest airborne refugee operation in American history." The Freedom Flights were an important and unusual chapter of cooperation in the history of Cuban-American foreign relations,which is otherwise characterized by mutual distrust. The program changed the ethnic makeup of Miami and fueled the growth of the Cuban-American enclave there.
Cuban immigration to the United States,for the most part,occurred in two periods:the first series of immigration of wealthy Cuban Americans to the United States resulted from Cubans establishing cigar factories in Tampa and from attempts to overthrow Spanish colonial rule by the movement led by JoséMartí,the second to escape from Communist rule under Fidel Castro following the Cuban Revolution. Massive Cuban migration to Miami during the second series led to major demographic and cultural changes in Miami. There was also economic emigration,particularly during the Great Depression in the 1930s. As of 2019,there were 1,359,990 Cubans in the United States.
Sally Quillian Yates is an American lawyer. From 2010 to 2015,she was United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In 2015,she was appointed United States Deputy Attorney General by President Barack Obama. Following the inauguration of President Donald Trump and the departure of Attorney General Loretta Lynch on January 20,2017,Yates served as Acting Attorney General for 10 days.
Elizabeth Neumann is an American former homeland security official. In the Trump administration she served from February 2017 to April 2020 as a senior advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to DHS Secretary John Kelly and Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke,and as DHS Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen,Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan,and Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf. She served on the Homeland Security Council staff in the George W. Bush administration starting in 2003.
Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children is a 3,200-bed migrant children's detention center in Homestead,Florida. Until August 3,2019,the center had been operated by Comprehensive Health Services,Inc. (CHSi),which is a subsidiary of the homeland security operator Caliburn International. It was believed to be the only remaining for-profit child detention center for migrants. The organization has faced severe criticism concerning immigration. Senator Elizabeth Warren had demanded that the detention facility be "closed down",and calls for investigation and oversight grew stronger when it was revealed that the federal government had paid $33 million in just 46 days for 1,200 of the empty beds.
Joe Biden's immigration policy is primarily based on reversing many of the immigration policies of the previous Trump administration. During his first day in office,Biden reversed many of Trump's policies on immigration,such as halting the construction of the Mexican border wall,ending Trump's travel ban restricting travel from 14 countries,and an executive order to reaffirm protections for DACA recipients. The Biden administration and Department of Homeland Security,under leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas,dramatically reined in deportation practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),prioritizing national security and violent crime concerns over petty and nonviolent offenses. However,Biden has also faced criticism for extending Title 42,a Trump administration border restriction that arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic,as well as restarting the use of expediting families in Central America,which can cause families to be sent back in weeks,compared to years for an average immigration case. In the fiscal year 2021,the US Border Patrol confirmed more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the US-Mexico border,more than quadruple the number in the previous fiscal year and the largest annual total on record. In January 2023,Biden announced a program to strengthen the admission of immigrants from Cuba,Haiti,Nicaragua,and Venezuela,while at the same time his administration will crack down on those who fail to use the plan's legal pathway and strengthen border security. In May 2023,the Biden Administration approved sending 1,500 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border following Title 42's expiration.
Ur Mendoza Jaddou is an American attorney who is the current director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security.
Linda Lopez is an American attorney serving as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. She previously served as a magistrate judge of the same court.
The Glades County Detention Center,at 1297 East State Road 78 in remote Moore Haven,Florida,United States,opened in 2007 with 440 beds. Operated by the Glades County Sheriff's Office,besides Glades County arrestees,90% of its beds house Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees,which were previously spread around many county jails. It is Glades County's largest employer. It has been the site of widespread abuses,and in 2022,17 members of Congress asked that it be closed.