October 26, 2017 – The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) joined with 13 other legal services providers and human rights advocate to tell ICE that new immigration detention facilities it seeks would undermine due process and civil rights for thousands of detained immigrants. The joint letter responded to ICE’s October 12 request for information (RFI) to assist in the identification of new detention sites to detain up to 3,000 people each day within 180 miles of St. Paul, Chicago, Detroit, and Salt Lake City.

The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, Advocates for Human Rights, and the Detainee Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota work to provide pro bono services to people detained by ICE in Sherburne, Carver, Freeborn, Ramsey, and Nobles County jails in Minnesota. Our organizations are already overwhelmed by the number of people needing assistance, and we do not have the capacity to provide needed representation to the additional number of immigrants who would be detained under the new RFI.

“Immigrants in detention need lawyers,” said John Keller, executive director of ILCM. “Immigration law is insanely complicated, and immigration judges are overburdened with huge backlogs of cases. Without an attorney, immigrants cannot determine what legal options they may have or what facts and arguments to put before the judge.”

In Minnesota, only 21 percent of detained immigrants have legal representation. There is no right to appointed counsel in the immigration court system, so immigrants in detention are only represented if they can retain private counsel or find free legal services.

Increasing detention is the wrong direction to go. Alternatives to detention, including parole, affordable bond, community-based support programs and regular check-ins, cost less than 10 percent of the amount of detention, according to the Government Accounting Office. Pilot programs show compliance rates at check-in and hearings of 95-99 percent.

“Detention makes it much harder for immigrants to find attorneys or to prepare for their hearings,” said Keller. “Moreover, while the Constitution requires immigration detention to be civil and non-punitive, that’s not what happens. Across the country, most immigrant detainees are held in private prisons, where abusive treatment has been repeatedly documented. Increasing immigration jails is the wrong move to make. Alternatives to detention are both less expensive and more humane.”

Read and download the RFI response letter at https://immigrantjustice.org/detention-RFI-letter

The letter was signed by representatives from the following organizations:

In Minnesota:

• Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota
• Advocates for Human Rights, Minnesota
• ACLU of Minnesota
• Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid
• University of Minnesota Detainee Rights Clinic

Outside Minnesota:

• American Civil Liberties Union
• ACLU of Michigan
• ACLU of Utah
• ACLU of Wyoming
• Detention Watch Network
• Immigrant Legal Services, Salt Lake City
• Michigan Immigrant Rights Center
• National Immigrant Justice Center, Chicago

 

October 19, 2017 – St. Cloud community members and elected officials this week denounced an anti-refugee resolution proposed by city council member Jeff Johnson. Council member John Libert called the resolution “inappropriate and said he thinks it is unconstitutional. Mayor Dave Kleis agreed that the resolution seemed unconstitutional and said that “We strive very hard to be a welcoming community. We work very hard to encourage people to come to the community. We should be focusing our efforts on making sure everyone succeeds.”

The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota applauds the response of these and other St. Cloud leaders and residents in rejecting the intolerance and bigotry of a small but vocal group that has pushed for a moratorium on refugee resettlement. The strong responses from community leaders reflects their determination to make St. Cloud a welcoming city. These leaders, not the loud but small anti-immigrant clique, represent the community as a whole.

Their strong response has already succeeded in delaying the introduction of the resolution, which Johnson proposed in an email to council members on Tuesday, the same day as St. Cloud’s 12th annual “Conversation on Race.” Johnson initially planned to introduce the resolution on October 23, but then said he would delay until November 6. In order to introduce the resolution, he would need a second from another city council member.

“Minnesota welcomes refugees and recognizes their important contributions to our communities,” said John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). “Just last month we had a wonderful, positive educational presentation about immigration and refugee law and policy with more than 75 persons joining us at the library in St. Cloud. These New Americans are vital to our workforce, schools, and futures. Like the rest of the state, St. Cloud is strengthened by diversity, and especially by the courage and strength of refugees. We join the majority of St. Cloud residents in rejecting prejudice and we stand in support of intentional, positive measures to make Minnesota a welcoming state.”

 

Three of his first cousins were killed in Guatemala and he fled, in fear for his life. Now he is ordered to return.

Dr. Guan Lee, who has spent the past 18 years in MN, was ordered to return to Malaysia, but got a last-minute reprieve.

 

 

On October 17, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing the latest version of the president’s controversial travel ban.

October 13, 2017 – ” The most important word here tonight is community,” Joseph Levin, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), told hundreds of supporters of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). “Welcome immigrants – documented, undocumented – into the community. These are really strong people. That’s how they got here, how most of our ancestors got here. … Support from the community is the most critical thing that any of us can do.”

Speaking at an October 12 benefit for ILCM, Levin recounted his early days growing up in segregated Alabama. He was a Jew and Morris Dees, who later co-founded SPLC with him, was a Baptist. Despite this major difference, they had more in common: “We were both white, went to the same all-white high school, the same all-white university, the same all-white law school.” Back then, Levin said, “Every white person I knew was a racist. So was I.” Change came slowly and gradually to him, as the civil rights movement changed the country.

Now he sees the country going backwards, with “invigoration of extremists and extremist groups from the Klan and neo-Nazis to radical anti-immigrant groups,” and with “overt bigotry … justified by our president, his vice president, and their various surrogates.”

“What country is this?” Levin asked. “I thought the stories of bigotry and hate were relegated to the fringes of our society. I was wrong. I see, smell, and feel the 1950s and 1960s again.”

Ibrahim Hirsi of MinnPost moderated a panel discussion following Levin’s keynote, with Senator Patricia Torres-Ray; Maya Salah, an attorney with Lindquist & Vennum and ILCM board member; and ILCM Executive Director John Keller.

Torres-Ray described the impact of current anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric on families, with undocumented parents living in fear and worrying about how to plan for their U.S. citizen children’s futures. She described isolation as another consequence of today’s anti-immigrant policies, with people uncertain about whether they can trust their neighbor, teacher, doctor or church.

Asked for a hopeful message, attorney Maya Salah held up a small booklet. “This is our hope,” she said. “I love the constitution. It is one of the reasons I went to law school. … That’s where the hope is for me. That ultimately we can use the law to get to where we want to get to as a nation.”

Another reason for hope, said John Keller, is that the overwhelming majority of people in the country support the Dream Act. Five major networks, including Fox, polled people on whether they support a path to citizenship for those who entered as children. “Every one of the networks was in 80 percent support level, including Fox,” he said.

The Dream Act, Keller concluded, “is the gateway to deeper systems change in the face of people who don’t want it to happen.”

Keller thanked the people who support ILCM, both those at the benefit and those who could not be there. He listed concrete steps to take in support of immigrants:

1. Talk to people you disagree with – civilly.
2. Ask people who live in Minnesota Representative Tom Emmer, Jason Lewis, and Erik Paulsen’s districts to call their representative every single day. First on the Dream Act and then on immigrant justice. “I am convinced that Minnesota will be the state in the Midwest where we have unanimous, bipartisan Congressional support for the Dream Act.”
3. Ask businesses and organizations to publicly support the Dream Act and immigrant justice. Go to FWD.us and see the list of more than 800 corporations, which includes Minnesota-based Best Buy, General Mills, Target, and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.
4. Donate and volunteer for an organization that supports immigrants and refugees.

Finally, Keller said, “We don’t have the luxury of fatigue. We cannot be overwhelmed by the snowstorm of hate, of anti-immigrant, of anti-everything. We are the ones who have to be strong and not give up.”

The National Immigrant Justice Center has annotated the text of Trump’s ‘principles’ regarding immigration – if you want specific rebuttal of any one of these ‘principles,’ this is a good place to begin.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) denied a stay of deportation to Jacobo Gabriel Tomas on September 25, ordering him to leave his home, family, church, and community in Worthington and go to Guatemala—the country he fled almost 25 years ago. Despite an amazing outpouring of support from community and elected officials, ICE refused to extend prosecutorial discretion.

“Jacobo is the kind of person we should welcome to legal residence and citizenship, not someone who should be sent to an uncertain future in a country he has not seen since he was a child,” said ILCM Executive Director John Keller. “If he does not deserve leniency and exercise of discretion, who in the world does?

“The cruel impact of this decision on Jacobo and his family and community demonstrates the need for reform of a broken immigration system. There is neither sense nor justice in ripping apart a family and expelling a productive, contributing member of our community.”

“This decision demonstrates the heartlessness of rote application of immigration laws,” said Kathy Klos, an attorney with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) who has represented Jacobo for years. “Justice requires thought and compassion, not robotic application of the harshest penalties possible under law.”

Jacobo has lived in the United States for almost 25 years, for all of his adult life. In 1992, at the age of 16, Jacobo fled Guatemala to escape the violence of civil war and genocide. He applied for asylum but, after many years of fighting within the system, ultimately was denied in 2002.

By that time, he was married, with two children and another on the way. Jacobo’s four U.S. citizen children depend on him and love him very much. He has worked hard, and his only brush with the law apart from minor traffic tickets came when he was charged with using false work documents twelve years ago. He paid a fine for that, pleading guilty to two misdemeanor offenses.

Before and after that time, he worked hard, paid taxes, and earned a place as a valued leader in St. Mary’s Catholic Church and in Worthington, the community where he lives and owns a home. U.S. immigration authorities recognized that he was a good person and not a priority for deportation. They exercised prosecutorial discretion to grant him work authorization and year-to-year withholding of deportation.

This year, all that changed. Under the Trump administration, orders went out to make nearly everyone a priority for deportation. Jacobo’s deep roots in Worthington, his years of contributions to the community, his children—that all meant nothing any longer.

Over the last several months, ICE has denied his multiple requests for prosecutorial discretion. In September, ILCM filed a motion for a stay of deportation, based on three grounds:

1. Jacobo faces possible life and death circumstances in Guatemala, one of the most dangerous countries in the world;
2. Jacobo is an upstanding community member and father, who is an asset, not a threat to the United States; and
3. Jacobo is an original DREAMer who will qualify for the DREAM Act that President Trump and leaders of Congress are committed to passing.

St. Paul ICE Field Office Director Scott Baniecke denied that motion. Senator Al Franken advocated strongly with ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan, but Homan refused to consider or even acknowledge any of the reasons for exercising discretion in Jacobo’s case, and refused to reconsider the field office decision.

In a press release, the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota said:

“On behalf of Jacobo and his family, thank you to all of the hundreds of people who called and emailed the ICE office this week, asking them to exercise prosecutorial discretion and allow Jacobo to remain here with his family. We appreciate your support and concern. We appreciate the efforts made by Senator Al Franken, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Congressman Tim Walz, Minnesota State Representative Rod Hamilton, Worthington Mayor Mike Kuhle, and other elected officials, community members, and supporters.”