A coalition of immigrant and civil rights groups sent a letter urging the administration to grant temporary protective status (TPS) to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, arguing that an ominous spike in violence in those countries, known collectively as the Northern Triangle of Central America, was fueling a migration crisis. The letter, signed by more than 270 organizations led by the National Immigrant Justice Center, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Kids in Need of Defense and the Jesuit Conference, is aimed at encouraging the Dept. of Homeland Security to stop its roundup of undocumented families who have been rejected for asylum by immigration courts.

It could also set up a struggle over control of the U.S. response to the surge in migrants crossing the southwestern border between DHS, which has been conducting the raids, and State, which recently announced plans to set up third-country processing centers in Central America. The group Alianza Americas convened a conference call Wednesday with the AFL-CIO to discuss the adminstration’s conflicting approaches to the problem.

However the letter is received by the administration, there can be little doubt as to the dire nature of the situation in the Northern Triangle leading people to flee. El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have ranked among the worst countries in the world for femicide for six years running, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center’s press release; El Salvador and Guatemala have the highest rates of child homicides in the world.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) filed a legal challenge to SB 11, a new Texas state law making it a felony to harbor immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. The group says the law makes it possible for authorities to target landlords and shelters providing refuge.

On the campaign trail, Sen. Ted Cruz blasted the Dept. of Homeland Security, claiming in a letter to department leadership that their failure to more aggressively monitor social media helped enable the perpetrators of the San Bernardino attacks.

On the Democratic side, advocates cheered Hillary Clinton’s comments on Islamophobia at an Iowa Democratic forum, blasting the xenophobic comments of the GOP frontrunner as “shameful and offensive.”

The Guardian reported that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have hired Dreamers for significant roles in their campaign organizations.

Among other grantee activities:

--America’s Voice and other grantees shared a piece in the Huffington Post by former USCIS chief counsel Stephen Legomsky, assessing the shortcomings in the legal challenge to President Obama’s immigration executive actions before the Supreme Court and arguing that “Texas's radical theory of standing would be a recipe for paralysis.”

--Human Rights First published a piece on how hostility toward Syrian refugees in the 2016 presidential campaign and on Capitol Hill was playing in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, all countries with sizable refugee contingents. The piece concluded that “the world is listening to the rhetoric of U.S. political leaders and watching to see what the United States will do.”