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The Employment and Training Administration of the Department of Labor (DOL) is issuing this notice to announce updates to the Adverse Effect Wage Rates (AEWR) for the employment of temporary or seasonal nonimmigrant foreign workers (H-2A workers) to perform agricultural labor or services other than the herding or production of livestock on the range. AEWRs are the minimum wage rates DOL has determined must be offered, advertised in recruitment, and paid by employers to H-2A workers and workers in corresponding employment so that the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States (U.S.) similarly employed will not be adversely affected. In this notice, DOL announces the AEWRs based on wage data reported by DOL's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey. The AEWRs established in this notice are applicable to H-2A job opportunities classified: (1) in Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes other than the six SOC codes comprising the field and livestock workers (combined) group, and (2) in the field and livestock workers (combined) occupational group that are located in States or regions, or equivalent districts or territories, for which the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Farm Labor Report (better known as the Farm Labor Survey, or FLS) does not report a wage.

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) issues this interpretation to revise and clarify its position on the classification of certain Department programs providing "Federal public benefits," as defined in Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), Public Law 104-193. The Department concludes that the postsecondary education programs and "other similar benefit" programs described within this interpretive rule, including adult education programs authorized under Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, postsecondary career and technical education programs under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, and other programs when used to fund postsecondary learning opportunities, provide federally funded forms of assistance that constitute "Federal public benefits" subject to PRWORA's citizenship verification requirements. The interpretation also revokes and supersedes certain aspects of the Department's previously issued Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) of November 19, 1997, which mischaracterized these programs as not affected by PRWORA, for the reasons described further within this notice.

A Ninth Circuit panel said Thursday that a lower court overstepped its authority by restricting a civil legal aid organization from using for advocacy purposes information that was gathered during discovery in a class of seasonal farmworkers' now-settled forced labor case against a Washington fruit grower.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist whom immigration officials are seeking to deport, is pursuing $20 million in damages for allegedly malicious prosecution and abuse of process, the Center for Constitutional Rights announced Thursday.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official testified Thursday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia would be taken into custody as soon as he's released from U.S. Marshals Service custody in Tennessee, but that no determinations had yet been made about where the government might seek to deport him then.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced that immigrants living in the country without legal authorization and other noncitizens will no longer be eligible for benefits under Head Start and a host of other federal healthcare programs, based on the agency's reinterpretation of a 1996 social welfare law.

Democratic state lawmakers in Florida sued Gov. RonDeSantis on Thursday to demand access to the new immigrant detention center in the Everglades the lawmakers say they were blocked from visiting last week.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security official testified in Massachusetts federal court on Thursday that he was only "speculating" when he said during a deposition last month that the offices of border czar Tom Homan and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were behind a decision to use pro-Israel websites to source leads on potential deportation targets.