charge in Madison, Wisconsin would be a very
different place. >> 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 system? We turn to immigration attorney
Grant Sovern, thanks very much for being here.
>> Thank you for your interest.
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
the 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. But and then we also hear,
if only you wait in line like everybody else, if
only you 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 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 and says, you're no
longer illegal. And the worst that I can think of
from our own perspective are the 800 families,
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 it 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. But all these people are ones
who have 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 back. The
law says they shouldn't be sent back. 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 asylum status so you can have permanent
resident 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 be try and
represent somebody. If you don't have a lawyer right
now, I can tell you you have 100% chance of being
deported because the rules have changed so much. The
the ground on which we are standing in immigration
court is changing every day or every week.
>> If you do have a lawyer, what are your odds?
>> I mean, I can 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 going to 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? >> 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 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