Here & Now

Grant Sovern on Changes to The US Immigration System's Rules

Frederica Freyberg:
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.

Grant Sovern:
Thank you for your interest.

Frederica Freyberg:
So you have described the immigration system right now as an emergency on two fronts. How so?

Grant Sovern:
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.

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Grant Sovern:
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 were 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
And there’s a brand new rule out this week about refugees?

Grant Sovern:
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.

Frederica Freyberg:
What kind of scramble is this for people in your line of work?

Grant Sovern:
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 ground on which we are standing in immigration court is changing every day or every week.

Frederica Freyberg:
If you do have a lawyer, what are your odds?

Grant Sovern:
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.

Frederica Freyberg:
Where does this end up?

Grant Sovern:
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 can.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. We leave it there. Grant Sovern, thanks very much.

Grant Sovern:
Thank you.