Both Minneapolis and St. Paul announced relief programs to help low-income residents with housing costs. They will also offer assistance to small businesses. Both cities offer these programs to residents without regard to immigration status.

In Minneapolis

Minneapolis Gap Funding makes $3 million in housing assistance available to any Minneapolis residents, regardless of immigration status. This program has two separate sources of funding. Both are for low-income Minneapolis residents with income loss due to COVID-19.

The first program is for any families making 30 percent or less of the area median income. The second program is for families with at least one child enrolled in Minneapolis public schools. Families in this second program can make up to 50 percent of area median income. Income limits for both programs are listed on the Minneapolis Gap Funding web page.

The funds are limited. The usual payment will be no more than $1500 per household. Money may be used only for rent or utilities. Payments will be made directly to the property owner or to a utility company.

A second program offers no-interest loans to small businesses. These include businesses with 20 or fewer employees. Some self-employed people also qualify.  The Minneapolis Gap Funding web page has details on this program. Loans may be forgivable if the business is located in a part of Minneapolis already designated for special assistance.

As of April 6, Minneapolis is still working on the application process. The number of applications approved will depend on the availability of funds.

In St. Paul

The Saint Paul Bridge Fund is supported by the Saint Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority. Other contributors include Baird, Bush Foundation, Ecolab Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Securian Foundation, Minnesota United FC, Minnesota Wild, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, and Xcel Energy​.

St. Paul’s Bridge Funding program offers up to $1,000 in housing assistance. This help is for families who have a minor child living in the home. They must have lost income due to COVID-19. Their income before COVID-19 can be up to 40 percent of the median income. In St. Paul, eligible families can be either renters or homeowners.

St. Paul will accept applications from April 8 to April 19. A lottery will select 1,000 applications for review. Other applications will be assigned randomly to a waiting list. If any funds are left after these applications are reviewed, applications from the waiting list will be considered.

St. Paul will also offer small business grants of $7,500 to qualifying St. Paul businesses.  These businesses must be retail businesses located in St. Paul. Their gross annual income must be less than two million dollars. Other criteria are outlined on the Bridge Fund for Small Business web page.

The application period will run from April 8 to April 19.

The Federal Stimulus Program

The federal government is sending out “economic impact payments” to individuals. These payments are part of the CARES Act.  Congress passed this law and the President signed it in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government excludes undocumented immigrants from this emergency assistance. It even excludes U.S. citizens living in their households.

Undocumented workers pay taxes. They may use an ITIN—Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a social security number. Even though they pay federal and state taxes, they do not receive unemployment benefits. No matter how much they pay into the system, they will not receive Social Security benefits. No matter how much they are affected by COVID-19, they will not receive federal economic impact payments.

 

 

 

On March 31 at 4pm, Evangeline, ILCM’s Archbishop Ireland Justice Fellow, went live on our Facebook page to talk about current immigration updates in regards to COVID-19. This was the first in a series of Facebook live events with immigration/COVID-19 updates. 

Topics covered included, but were not limited to, immigration offices closures, DACA renewals, work permits, Somali TPS, and public charge. 

The same information was shared in Spanish on Tuesday, March 31 at 5pm, in another Facebook live event.

El 31 de marzo a las 5pm, Tim, un abogado de ILCM, hizo un Facebook en vivo para hablar sobre las novedades en el ámbito de inmigración con respeto a los cambios con COVID-19. Esto fue el primer episodio de una serie de eventos en Facebook live (Facebook en vivo) sobre las novedades de las leyes/la política de inmigración y COVID-19.

Unos temas incluidos: los cierres de oficinas de inmigración, las renovaciones de DACA, los permisos de trabajo, el TPS Somalí y el cargo público.

 

• Immigration & COVID-19 PPT – English

• • Inmigración & COVID-19 PPT – Spanish 

“In essence, we’re doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting,” immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks told John Oliver two years ago. Since then, orders from Washington have made immigration courts even worse. In addition to a million-case backlog and life-and-death decisions, immigration judges face overwhelming political pressure from the Trump administration.

Immigration judges’ authority has been eroded by order after order from the Attorney General. Immigration courts and judges come under his direct authority. The Attorney General appoints and removes judges and can remove cases from their dockets if he does not like their rulings. That does not happen in other courts.

The Attorney General directs immigration judges to deny entire categories of asylum cases, orders them to strictly limit or deny continuances, and demands that each judge complete a minimum of 700 cases per year, no matter how complex or difficult the cases. The Attorney General, the nation’s chief prosecutor, also exercises the authority to reverse judges’ decisions when he disagrees with them. Does that sound like a fair court system?

Faced with a choice between following orders and delivering impartial justice, judges quit last year at double the rate of previous years. Immigration Judge Lisa Dornell considered it an honor and a privilege to serve as an immigration court judge for 24 years.  She left in April 2019, saying that immigration courts had become “a toxic environment.”

Judge Ilyce Shugall quit in March 2019, saying that the administration “is doing everything in its power to completely destroy the immigration court system, the board of immigration appeal and the immigration system in general.”

Judge John Richardson left on September 30, as a speed-up system of case quotas went into effect. Richardson told Buzzfeed News: “The timing of my retirement was a direct result of the draconian policies of the Administration, the relegation of [judges] to the status of ‘action officers’ who deport as many people as possible as soon as possible with only token due process, and blaming [judges] for the immigration crisis caused by decades of neglect and under funding of the Immigration Courts.”

Judge Rebecca Jamil, who was a government immigration prosecutor before becoming an immigration judge, also quit last year. “Family separations; Sessions making his own case law on asylum; when we could continue cases — I could no longer sit below the seal of the Department of Justice and represent the Department of Justice at that point,” she told Buzzfeed News.

Judge Ashely Tabbador said “hostility and insulting working conditions” force many judges out. Tabbador heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, the union for immigration judges. Now the Trump administration is trying to decertify that union, leaving judges with even less voice and power.

The Trump administration appoints new judges without regard to expertise in immigration law, which is often as complex as the U.S. tax code. In a recent group of 28 new immigration judges, 11 had no prior immigration experience. They will be deciding life and death cases, with no prior experience, in an atmosphere charged with political pressure.

Courts are supposed to be independent, to uphold the law, and to protect the rights of the people who appear before them. The Trump administration and its Attorneys General prevent immigration courts from maintaining these basic principles of justice.

Congress can change this. What Congress can and should do is to make the immigration court an Article I court.

In Article III courts, the federal courts established by the Constitution, judges hold a life tenure precisely so that they can be independent and not be threatened or removed by political appointees.

Other courts, called Article I courts, have been established by Congress. In these courts, judges operate under a set of laws and serve for specified terms in office. For example, Tax Court judges are appointed for 15-year terms, effectively insulating them from political pressure.

Only Congress can create Article I courts. Only Congress can give immigration judges the independence they need to administer the law with fairness and impartiality. Congress must act to remove immigration courts from subservience to the Attorney General by making them independent, Article I courts.