Scores of lawyers from a St. Paul-based legal aid nonprofit and three or more law firms. The intervention of two U.S. senators, weekend-long series of phone calls to the director of Homeland Security and high-ranking Customs officials. Six days of legwork.
That’s what John Keller said it took before a 4-year-old Somali girl from a Ugandan refugee camp — previously approved for travel but stopped after President Donald Trump’s initial travel ban went into effect — was finally reunited with her mother here in Minnesota.
Sitting in his St. Paul office, Keller shakes his head as he recalls the herculean amount of resources it took to get just one little girl here.
”It’s absurd,” he said during an hourlong chat. “And all in the name of supposedly keeping us safe — a 4-year-old child who could not see her mother.”
The youngest of eight siblings who grew up on a dairy farm north of Stillwater in May Township, Keller runs the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. He was afflicted early with that unshakable bug for social justice and championing the underdog. But it became a full-blown fever after he spent a year working with a human rights group in Peru in the late 1980s and 1990 that courageously braved threats by both government and Shining Path rebel forces to shed light on human rights violations from both sides.
“Those of us who have options have the responsibility to give back, to use education for its highest purpose: social good,” he told me.
For 20 years now, the center, with offices in St. Paul, Austin, Rochester, Worthington, Moorhead and Duluth, has provided a variety of legal services to poor and low-income clients from all nationalities. That service ranges from naturalization and citizenship applications to representing detainees at deportation hearings. The recent election and confusion over travel bans and executive orders have taxed the 15-lawyer staff in recent weeks. Busy is a gross understatement. The phones keep ringing. Keller still has 4,000 unopened emails in his inbox. The center has held an average of two to three public forums a week to mostly allay fears and also provide realistic advice.
“People are scared about what’s going on,” he said.
We talked:
Q: How did the Immigrant Law Center come about?
A: The organization was created out of the 1996 federal immigration law. We were born out of dramatic and punitive laws and I have to keep reminding myself and others of that. We worked through 9/11, which was kind of the height of federal policy being driven by fear. It seemed to be in the rear-view mirror. We were two-thirds of the way in passing sweeping immigration reform in 2013. It became discouraging from that fall to January of 2014 when the Republicans made it clear that they would not bring it up. Even the polling now shows a majority of Americans in favor of reform. The American public wants to fix this; it’s the politicians …
Q: What happened that day after the election last fall?
A: I did my first forum. It was also a live event on Facebook. It was held at El Colegio (a charter high school in Minneapolis). There was a table of teachers and Latino leaders. People were crying. Kids were freaking out, about whether there was a deportation force, about their parents, what would happen to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) — remember as a candidate Trump promised that those executive orders would be canceled. DACA was a political coming-of-age for these young adults. Suddenly the world was shifting under their feet. There are 6,000 young Minnesotans who sent their information to Homeland Security and now they feared it could be used against them …
Those of us who have options have the responsibility to give back, to use education for its highest purpose: social good.”
Q: What’s your take on what will happen with DACA?
A: I’m cautiously hopeful that it will remain in place. I think what we have seen with DACA from President Trump gives some hope that he is willing to, I don’t know, be open to thinking about things differently now that he is president. Nationally, 1 million people are affected by it. Those lives are dramatically different and better because of it. For us, it’s Exhibit A as to exactly what would happen if we would legalize everybody.
Q: Who else have the travel bans and other actions affected?
A: It’s shocking, the diversity. For about a week there was a professor from the University of Minnesota, I believe a Syrian, who has been here forever, whose visa all of a sudden was not valid to return to the U.S. There was a doctor from one of the seven banned nations who performs medical humanitarian work across the world. He had trips scheduled in advance. He planned a trip to Mexico to help poor people there. But he canceled the trip after we could not reassure him that he could get back in if he left. Others were very powerful people, not typically our clientele, who have been nothing but an asset …
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Q: What else?
A: The instability now of (doing law work) in this field. In every presentation, I tell people that the information we give out today is accurate to the best of my ability, but before you act on it, check back with us because things are shifting in very dramatic and unpredictable ways. We are used to, in the world of immigration, having a level of instruction, some level of guidance when there are abrupt changes. What has happened has not followed normal administrative due process. It sounds boring, but rules, process, exist for a reason. It exists for businesses that are depending upon foreign doctors, also hospitals, in rural parts in Minnesota, where people are increasingly getting medical care from foreign professionals. There are also people who need to make plans years in advance, about where they will be doing their medical residencies, and suddenly those rules are turned upside down. Foreign professionals whose employers are trying to get into the U.S., to fill chemistry or computer programming jobs. There’s a lot of upheaval across the board.
Q: What are other frustrations?
A: The polling continues to show that the American public — 62 percent — wants immigration reform for the dreamers; 75 percent want permanent status for the kids. It’s the politics. For the first time, we had a presidential candidate that has made anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim comments a part of his platform and won. Yet, I don’t believe it’s the case that the country is anti-immigrant or racist. But that’s really hard to unpack for some people, particularly people who are seeing an increase in hate crimes at the very same time. So I can talk about the polling and the data, but if it’s not what people are reading or experiencing, then …
Q: You mentioned that working with the DACA kids has been perhaps the highlight of your 18 years as an immigration attorney.
A: Yes. We have made sure post-election that the Minnesota business community was communicating from both a Minnesota and national perspective to this former businessman (President Trump) about the economic impact of taking away work authorization from a million people. For at least the next two decades we are going to be scraping for every worker we can get our hands on in this state. The workforce data is rational and factual. Which is why I feel we will eventually win once we get past these political promises.
Q: Any positives?
A: I have never seen in my 18 years such an outpouring of support for our work. (More than 35 Twin Cities area restaurants on Wednesday donated 40 percent of proceeds to the center). It is coming from every place imaginable. There have been $5 donations. There have been $7,500 donations and more from individuals. People are looking for ways to express values more in line with what people imagine the United States to be. Lawyers and non-lawyers are utilizing the volunteer tab on our website. People have called here at the center wanting to donate clothes and diapers. There’s an unprecedented hunger out there to help. That’s encouraging.
