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Elizabeth Warren on Thursday unveiled her plan to reform the nation’s immigration system amid a deepening crisis over detention at the southern border and a fraught debate across the country and within the Democratic Party on the way forward. Among other things, the proposal calls for allowing more immigrants to come into the country legally, lifting the refugee cap from 30,000 under the Trump administration to 125,000 and then 175,000; a revamp of the immigration court system to establish independence from Justice Department leaders; and the creation of an "Office of New Americans" tasked with facilitating integration, including teaching English. (Thompson, 7/11)

The rollout comes as Warren and other national Democrats have accused the Trump administration in recent weeks of exacerbating a humanitarian crisis along the southern border by failing to provide basic necessities and sanitary conditions for migrants held in detention centers. “But while Trump may have taken the system to its most punitive extreme,” Warren wrote, “his racist policies build on a broken immigration system and an enforcement infrastructure already primed for abuse.” (Forgey, 7/11)

Ms. Warren also said she would create a task force in the Justice Department to investigate allegations of abuses of migrants detained by the Trump administration, including “medical neglect and physical and sexual assaults.”“If you are violating the basic rights of immigrants, now or in the future, a Warren administration will hold you accountable,” she wrote. (Stevens, 7/11)

In response to a swirl of recent reports alleging overcrowding and squalid conditions at similar facilities, Warren is pledging to hold the current administration accountable, saying she will "designate a Justice Department task force to investigate accusations of serious violations -- including medical neglect and physical and sexual assaults of detained immigrants." It would be granted "independent authority to pursue any substantiated criminal allegations." (Diaz, 7/11)

Immigrant rights activists and Democratic Latino political leaders called her plan one of the most comprehensive yet in the campaign. Many of them have criticized their party’s presidential candidates for failing to prioritize immigration even as the issue has risen to the top tier of voter concerns and is expected to be central to Trump’s reelection campaign. “The thing her platform says the most to me is that she has done what the movement has asked: she has stepped away from the old framework,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive advocacy organization. (Ulloa, 7/11)

The plan puts Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat running for president, firmly on the liberal side of the immigration debate. Her announcement comes as many Democratic voters are angered by reports of squalid conditions in U.S. border facilities, the separation of children from parents and President Trump’s threats to deport “millions.” (Linskey, 7/11)

Warren’s plan comes amid heightened tensions over immigration this week. The proposal’s release coincides with a report in the New York Times that mass arrests of thousands of undocumented people are expected to begin Sunday. In addition, an administration official said Trump would seek a new way to obtain data on citizenship after the president backed down from his effort to require the U.S. Census to include a question in the decennial population count. (Kapur, 7/11)