While the immigration enforcement
surge in Minneapolis has wound
down, targeted arrests,
including in Wisconsin, continue.
The mass deportation policy has
the immigration system scrambling
to keep up.
What kind of limbo does this leave
people in and what is happening
in the immigration systems?
We turn to immigration attorney
Grant Sovern.
Thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for your interest.
So you have described the
immigration system right now as an
emergency on two
fronts. How so?
Well, on one side, there are just so
many more people being picked up
than there ever have been before.
I mean, it appears that there's some
sort of quota that ICE
and Border Patrol have to reach.
So it's just an unbelievable,
unprecedented volume of
people that we have to address and
we have to get to them quickly.
If we don't find them within a day
or two days or at the most three,
they get moved to a facility.
Away from their family, away from
a lawyer who can help them in a
jurisdiction that's often much more
difficult.
But on the second side, the
government is just changing the
rules every day,
every week, something that lawyers
have to find out about when you're
in court and waiting for a hearing,
and they're just changing rules that
make due process almost impossible
for anybody to get.
Speaking of changing the rules,
what are you seeing among people who
have followed all the rules
to become U.S.
Citizens or they're here on some
kind of protected status or
refugee status or something like
that?
Yeah, I think, you know, we hear
from the government that all
immigrants are criminals and
therefore they should be deported.
And then we also hear, if
only you wait in line like everybody
else, if you only file the right
application, which frankly does not
exist anymore.
But successive presidential
administrations have come up with
their own programs because
Congress basically hasn't done an
overhaul of the immigration system
since 1952.
But we can look back at presidents.
Ronald Reagan presided over the
biggest amnesty that there ever was.
George Bush created the temporary
protected status.
Barack Obama created the DACA
for dreamer kids.
So there have been programs that all
sorts of presidential
administrations came up with.
Because Congress hasn't done
anything to create a law and a real
visa category or program.
But because of that, the next
president can just cancel those
things. And this administration has
been doing that left and right.
So people who followed every
rule they're supposed to, fill out
the right application, waited when
they should, paid the right fee,
are now being told that we are
making you illegal.
If that's a term that can be used
that the administration uses, but
they have done everything right.
Especially now we're talking about
people from really problematic
places like Ukraine and Venezuela
and places with civil wars
and natural disasters where
people have gotten the application,
been approved and are here in a
legal path.
The government just pulls the rug
out from under, says you're no
longer illegal.
And the worst that I can think of
from our own perspective are
the 800 people
from Afghanistan
who are airlifted out of Kabul who
helped us and our government.
Who are now being told that
the programs that they have
temporary protected status or
humanitarian parole are no
longer valid and so we're going to
pick you up if you are still in that
status.
And there's a brand new rule
out this week about
refugees.
This is something that has been
going on for almost 75
years in the United States where we
take people who have been
languishing in refugee camps around
the world for 10 or 15 years and
give them a new life in the united
states. That's called refugee
status.
Asylum status are people who come to
the United states and apply
for permission not to be sent
back because they're personally
being persecuted because of their
race, their political opinion.
Their membership in a particular
social group, and we grant them
refugee status or asylum status.
The government gets to pick how many
people get to be refugees, and this
government has decided we will have
basically none, except for maybe
some people from South Africa.
But all these people are ones who...
Participated in this program, have
been granted status by the State
Department or by the Immigration
Service, and they're allowed to stay
in the United States indefinitely
because they can't be sent back.
They shouldn't be sent.
The law says they shouldn't.
And yet, just this week,
the government turned a rule that
says you may apply for
a green card within a year from
your refugee or asylum status,
so you can have permanent residence
status, stay, work wherever
you want, travel in and out of the
United States.
They've now turned that rule around
to say, if you didn't apply
for a green card within a year,
we reserve the right to detain
you, to investigate you and
potentially deport you for
no stated reason whatsoever,
except it seems like to have more
numbers to be able to say to the
American people, we've deported a
lot of people.
What kind of scramble is
this for people in your line
of work?
Yeah, I can't tell you, times are
difficult enough.
Like where I work at the Community
Immigration Law Center,
there are lawyers who are fighting
every day and it's a really
tough job, just
normally between the volume and
the stories and the humanitarian
side, kids and families.
But now the government is just
changing everything they do and it
is a very difficult situation.
To try and represent somebody.
If you don't have a lawyer right
now, I can tell you, you have a 100%
chance of being deported because the
rules have changed so much that
the ground on which we are standing
in immigration court is changing
every day or every week.
So without a lawyer, without the
legal system that we have, and I
know lots of people will say, well,
the government isn't paying
attention to court orders.
They are for the most part in
immigration court where we work.
But as those all change,
you don't even know what the rules
are going to be the next day, for
example.
If you do have a lawyer,
what are your odds?
Starting from the other side, you
have zero chance, but with a
lawyer, the problem right now is the
government isn't giving us any data
about what's happening in court.
I can tell you that we have people
who are succeeding who have a lawyer
in their deportation
cases, in whether or not they
get picked up, in wether or not the
get bond. The government is
currently saying that nobody is
eligible for bond, basically.
We file habeas
corpus petitions in federal court to
demand that immigration judges
give somebody a bond hearing,
but I mean I could tell you, you
know, a case that happened
just in the past few weeks with our
organization is somebody
was applying for asylum
from Latin America because they had
a very bona fide claim of
persecution that would happen to
them if they got sent back to their
home country and fortunately
came to us at the last minute and
said will you please come with us
and we didn't have time to prepare,
but when we went there we found out
about these alternative country
agreements that the government is
using to say, well,
we can't send you back to your home
country because of persecution, but
we're gonna send you to some third
country to which you've never been
before. And without a lawyer to
know that that's going to happen and
to prepare a case about
what would happen to that person if
they got sent. For example, in Latin
America, the government has arranged
this agreement to send almost
everybody to Honduras.
If you're from Africa.
Everybody is sent to Uganda and
without a lawyer. There's almost no
way for you to prepare that and even
with the lawyer It is extremely
difficult Where does this
end up?
I? Try not to look too far into the
future We are so day-to-day
trying to find enough lawyers trying
to make sure that people get some
form of due process Both
for the families, but also for our
community the fact that you
can be picked up sent to
another country And in the middle,
put in prison for a
potential civil violation without
any due process is something
that I and people in our community
in Wisconsin can't abide.
Everybody should have a fair shot,
at least.
The rules, you might have an opinion
one way or the other about what our
immigration rules say.
But let's at least apply the rules
to everybody.
And I think everybody can get behind
that. So I think every
day, I and the lawyers who
work at the Community Immigration
Law Center are trying just to make
sure today's people are getting
some due process so
all we can do is see what's in front
of us today and do the best
we can.
We leave it there.
Grant's over. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
It's really interesting and it's
kind of a...
Enforcement, you know, actions
and that kind of thing.
Yeah, I would suggest, you know, the
ACLU is doing a bunch and
the folks who are in their Milwaukee
office and there's some here too,
but they're at the front end of like
the civil rights side of it, like
what was happening in Minneapolis.
But yeah, the other side of it like
just the immigration law part of
it is what we're dealing with.
But you know the shocking part is
who gets picked up and people
getting shot and all that which,
you know, we're not even addressing.
There's plenty to
address.
Well, thank you.
We'll take the rest of the day off.
You've done a great job on this one.
No, that's you.
Oh, all right. I get to do it.