Here & Now

Here & Now for January 28, 2022

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Frederica Freyberg:

This week, the legislature put forward riot bills in reaction to 2020. Also happening, the race for governor heats up with a new Republican contender. And we take a look into the lives of Afghan refugees in Wisconsin, as they look for safety and asylum. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” Marisa Wojcik reports on the efforts to resettle Afghan refugees, and we hear insight from one of the lawyers working to help them, Erin Barbato. Plus, Mordecai Lee weighs in on the newest entrant to the race for governor. It’s “Here & Now” for January 28th.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

The emergency evacuation in Afghanistan last August airlifted more than 120,000 people. 13,000 came to Fort McCoy near Tomah. And now hundreds of families are settling in, calling Wisconsin their new permanent home. But there is still an uphill climb to find housing, navigate the immigration system, and sort through the trauma of leaving their home to the hands of the Taliban. Marisa Wojcik reports.

Johnny:

It’s just like completely shocking. It’s just like, oh, my God, I was never expecting this, and it just happened all of the sudden.

Khalid:

When I saw the news, I’m so upset, I am so sad.

Grant Sovern:

People saw chaos and it was awful, the way that the United States had to leave.

Sher Khan:

Everybody just tried to escape because they want to survive.

Mary Flynn:

Basically the Taliban had overrun the city and the airport. To me, it was like Kabul fell.

Marisa Wojcik:

Images of crowds of people outside the Kabul airport, waiting on tarmacs, and being packed into military planes saturated screens around the world as the United States frantically evacuated people out of Afghanistan in August of 2021 and the Taliban seized power.

Sher Khan:

Everyone who doesn’t think like them is an enemy to Taliban. And you can get killed for the basic reason as being — as living in Kabul.

Marisa Wojcik:

Sher Khan, a journalist, was evacuated from Kabul with his wife and children last year and they reached Fort McCoy in September. Now, with the Taliban in power, many have lost hope for those they left behind in Afghanistan.

Johnny:

I was hoping that I get graduated and then go back home so I could surprise my family. But that never happened.

Marisa Wojcik:

This is Johnny. He came to the United States in 2014 on a special immigrant visa, or SIV, for work he did to help the United States military.

Johnny:

I was receiving threats, you know, like text messages and then phone calls while I was working with the U.S. Marines. I decided not to stick around anymore and just move to the U.S.

Marisa Wojcik:

His identity is being protected because he fears his family still in Afghanistan will be targeted. His family tried but they were unable to make it into the Kabul airport.

Johnny:

The day the explosion happened, they left 30 minutes before. Can you imagine if they were there, like, you could have lost the entire family.

Marisa Wojcik:

For many families, it’s a similar story.

Khalid:

I am concerned about my two brothers. They worked with the military.

Marisa Wojcik:

Khalid came to Wisconsin in 2017, after receiving threats for his work with the U.S. Two of his brothers are currently being targeted by the Taliban. They, too, were unsuccessful getting into the Kabul airport.

Khalid:

They punish them, go away from airport. They hit him by the gun and they broken his arm.

Marisa Wojcik:

Now, his brothers have fled central Kabul for safety, only visiting their families under the cover of darkness.

Mary Flynn:

Neighbors are being threatened by the Taliban because they lived next door to someone that is known to have worked for the U.S. or a U.S. company. Just proximity could put you in danger.

Khalid:

The new generation, they hope for the future, but now they don’t have hope for the future.

Sher Khan:

There is no hope of future for the people. If I let — for example, even if Taliban didn’t kill me, if, for example, my children would not get the chance to get education. And I don’t want to see that. I would have done everything I could to provide my children to get their education because I don’t want my children to be extremists. I don’t want my children to be fundamentalists. I want my children to do something to make a positive difference in other people’s life. That’s what they are supposed to do.

Johnny:

In terms of money, in terms of jobs, in terms of, you know, economy, in terms of, you know, how people are, you know, escaping the country and there’s no education, it’s just like so many different things.

Marisa Wojcik:

With Kabul’s airport shut down, the only way out for Johnny’s family is to flee to a neighboring country. A journey his young sisters cannot weather.

Johnny:

Those little girls won’t be able to walk for 20 and 25 days in a row. That’s just impossible to just get to another country. Because there’s no flights. There’s no transportation, and they don’t have the documentation. I am really hoping that someone will see and hear my voice and do something about it, you know, like we were promised that we will be saved and our family will be saved.

Grant Sovern:

Honestly, when we’re at Fort McCoy talking with people about their own asylum case, their own SIV or way to stay in the U.S., they almost always start out with the most important thing to me is what can I do for my family or my friends or my colleagues who are still in Afghanistan, and they’re deathly afraid, for good reason, what could happen to them.

Marisa Wojcik:

Grant Sovern is an immigration attorney in Madison.

Grant Sovern:

So what we realized about two months into everybody being here is, they’re going to have to apply for asylum like everybody else does who is afraid to go back home.

Marisa Wojcik:

While many people qualified for special immigrant visas, at least half were designated with something called parole status. Sovern helped with legal orientation efforts at Fort McCoy, running clinics to help people start to think about the asylum application process.

Grant Sovern:

We all assume you can get asylum because your country is falling apart, and that is not what asylum is about. You have to show that you will be — you specifically will be singled out because of one of these grounds. So it’s a long process.

Marisa Wojcik:

For Sovern, who’s been doing pro bono immigration work for years, there’s been a lack of legal resources long before this.

Grant Sovern:

But this is certainly the most acute and the largest number of problems for the resources that we already don’t have. And a timeline that has to be achieved otherwise, we could be sending people back to Afghanistan.

Marisa Wojcik:

He says anyone with this parole status has one year upon entering the United States to file their application and two years to be approved. But they need a permanent address first.

Mary Flynn:

Right now, we are just all scrambling with the surge. We can’t even do anything else.

Marisa Wojcik:

Mary Flynn is a program manager for Lutheran Social Services Refugee Resettlement, handling cases in the Milwaukee area. Agencies help with a long list of items, but most important and desperately needed is affordable housing.

Mary Flynn:

The increase in prices are making it more difficult because we always want to have them be self-sufficient. The dignity and respect of learning life in America and doing well. We want them to do well.

Marisa Wojcik:

Johnny says Wisconsin is a good place for refugees to resettle.

Johnny:

I love cheese, and I’m turning to something more like a Wisconsin person. I really don’t like the cold, but beside that, I love Wisconsin.

Marisa Wojcik:

Now, Johnny and Khalid are helping out as translators for newly arrived families.

Johnny:

I’m not done with serving, and I really want to be somewhere so I can be proud of my family and both of my countries.

Khalid:

I help as a volunteer because our Afghan culture. When you are an Afghan somewhere, they will need help, you have to help.

Marisa Wojcik:

As local organizations work to resettle more and more people, they’re hoping communities will step up and help with resources.

Grant Sovern:

I think it’s a real opportunity for all of us to practice the welcome that really is Wisconsin. But the welcome also includes, you know, providing a safe community where they can live, and right now, it means finding other ways to help their local refugee resettlement agencies are needing places for them to stay, are needing clothing and kitchen supplies and school supplies for kids when they’ll go to school. But they also need legal support. And I think, you know, I would count them as lucky if they ended up in Wisconsin because I think there are a lot of people who believe in that kind of thing, and I think people will step up and help.

Mary Flynn:

I think that we always have to remember that this could be us. And when you think of it that way, you see the importance of being kind and compassionate and making them feel welcome like you’d like to be.

Sher Khan:

Bringing this amount of people from one side of the world to the other side of the world and giving them all the things they need, that is just beyond my imagination. I can’t even like, I mean, sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming. Whatever we receive here, we are thankful for.

Marisa Wojcik:

Reporting for “Here & Now,” I’m Marisa Wojcik.

Frederica Freyberg:

Journalist Sher Khan and his wife and children are being resettled in Massachusetts and he hopes to soon get back to his passion of journalism. Fort McCoy is one of the last bases open, and officials are hoping to have everyone resettled by the end of February. The UW Law School Immigrant Justice Clinic has been working with refugees there over the months since their arrival. Professor Erin Barbato directs the clinic, and she joins us now. Thanks for being here.

Erin Barbato:

Thanks so much for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as pointed to in Marisa’s reporting, how complicated is the legal process for Afghan refugees airlifted here?

Erin Barbato:

It’s incredibly complicated and it’s something that I think was surprising to everyone as we started navigating the system and trying to figure out how to provide legal resources to the people that arrived, because before they arrived, we thought many of them would be going through the process of applying for special immigrant visa and now they’ve looking that a majority of them will be going through the asylum process.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is mostly the current legal status of people now in Wisconsin, if you know?

Erin Barbato:

Most of the people that came over from Afghanistan that did not already have an immigrant visa or were U.S. citizens or a special immigrant visa, they were admitted in something called parole status, that the government has the ability to admit people into the United States for humanitarian reasons. So that’s how many of the people arrived and are now living in that status while they seek the next steps to have a pathway to citizenship here in the United States.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your clinic doing now for Afghan refugees at Fort McCoy?

Erin Barbato:

At Fort McCoy, we’re not working there anymore. Things are coming to a close there, but we are starting to provide legal services to Afghans who are living in the community and seeking asylum, or in the process of deportation. So we’re hoping to provide representation to a number of families and individuals, but there are not enough resources at the Immigrant Justice Clinic and really hoping to create more of a community effort with other NGOs in the state.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is it true that people could be sent back to Afghanistan if they don’t complete the asylum application process in time?

Erin Barbato:

It is a possibility. Normally when someone is applying for asylum, they need to apply within the first year of arriving in the United States. There are some exceptions to that, and it looks like there may be an exception applied in this case because everybody — most people who arrive with parole have two years of status as parolees before their lawful status would be terminated. So they may have a little bit more time to apply. But if you don’t apply and you fall out of status, you may be facing deportation.

Frederica Freyberg:

In fact, just a minute ago, you spoke to some of the people in the deportation process. How does that happen to someone?

Erin Barbato:

Some people can be placed in the deportation process because they are convicted of something or they’ve done something that makes them what’s called deportable and then they have to go in front of an immigration judge. Most of the people from Afghanistan are going to be going through the affirmative asylum process. So it’s through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services which is not in front of an immigration judge but if they’re not successful with obtaining asylum at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, they will then be in front of a judge for kind of their last chance.

Frederica Freyberg:

Backing up a little bit, since everyone who was brought here already went through background checks, couldn’t Congress just pass a bill saying that people who were emergency evacuated automatically get asylum?

Erin Barbato:

A lot of people specifically with this situation, we’re hoping there would be something called like an Afghan Adjustment Act. What we’ve had before with the Cuban Adjustment Act, which would allow everybody who came in this emergent situation to have an expedited manner to obtain their lawful permanent resident status and then have a pathway to citizenship. But so far it doesn’t seem like there has been much movement in our Congress to make this happen.

Frederica Freyberg:

Marisa, in her story also, spoke to the trauma of what happened to these folks and how they landed in Wisconsin. What did you learn from people when you were working with them at Fort McCoy about that trauma and how they’re able to kind of move through that?

Erin Barbato:

So we work with a lot of people who are seeking asylum from around the world. I’ve been doing this for a number of years now, and the stories are very similar. This is a particularly traumatic situation where people were evacuated without much time to prepare, which is common in asylum, but in this situation, they were brought to a country, to locations they’ve never known before. So the trauma is something people are really going to need resources to deal with and to heal from, and I’m hoping that we can provide that as a country to these people from Afghanistan.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Well, professor, thank you very much and thank you for your work.

Erin Barbato:

Thank you again for having me and thank you for your work on this.

Frederica Freyberg:

These segments are part of a PBS Wisconsin-WPR-WisContext collaboration, utilizing reporting, research and community-based expertise to provide information and insight about issues that affect Wisconsin. Look for a full presentation of this partnership reporting online this coming Monday morning, and hear from the journalists on “Central Time” on the Ideas Network Monday afternoon.

On the COVID front, cases around the state remain high but are down from the stratospheric peak of mid-January. The steadily-high cases caused the public health officer for Dane County to announce the county’s mask mandate would continue another month, through the end of February.

Janel Heinrich:

Despite seeing cases and hospitalizations level off from the steep increases we experienced earlier this month, over the past several weeks, we’ve seen this decrease but we are still in a surge. Our hospitals are still juggling an incredible number of patients, both COVID and otherwise, so please continue to use strong prevention practices.

Frederica Freyberg:

In Milwaukee, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the city this week. She touted the administration’s efforts to remove lead water lines, which was a part of the major infrastructure bill passed last year.

Kamala Harris:

Last month, we released the Biden-Harris Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan and the goal is to remove and replace all lead pipes over the next 10 years. These investments will create good union jobs. These investments will address the needs of our children. These investments will result in improved public health, the creation of more jobs, the infusion of support for important apprenticeship programs, and it’s just simply the right thing to do.

Frederica Freyberg:

According to Harris, the $15 billion plan to remove lead pipes, $48 million of those funds will be disbursed to Wisconsin this year.

Meanwhile at the state Capitol, the legislature passed a slate of law enforcement bills aimed at increasing recruitment for a workforce hit hard by the pandemic. Also in the package, Republican bills in response to the protests seen during 2020, some of which turned violent. The GOP proposal would define what a riot is and make knowingly participating in a riot that results in substantial damage to property or personal injury a felony.

Francesca Hong:

Protest is democracy. This bill being brought forward today by my friends across the aisle is a declaration of war against the First Amendment. The spirit of this bill is dismantling of the very first guarantees in this country’s Constitution. Those of free speech and the right to assembly.

Shae Sortwell:

You have an absolute right to go out there and say that you disagree with your government on their policies. An absolute right to go out there and make sure that your voices are heard. You don’t have the right to go out there and violate somebody else’s right of private property, burn their businesses, destroy everything they’ve built up.

Frederica Freyberg:

Also at the Capitol, Governor Tony Evers wants to give every Wisconsinite $150. With news of a growing projected state budget surplus, Evers would spend $1.7 billion of the $3.8 billion surplus for those checks, education funding and child care help. Republican leaders want to use the surplus for tax cuts in 2023. Election year politicking? Evers says no, just giving it back directly and sooner. The incumbent governor is going to see some sharp elbows come out in the run-up to the November election. But Republican candidates in a primary run-off are already going after each other. Former marine, Republican Kevin Nicholson, announced late this week he is running for governor. He will face off against former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and political newcomer Jonathan Wichmann. Another rough-and-tumble big money race for governor. UW-Milwaukee Political Scientist Mordecai Lee joins us with his insights. Mordecai, so nice to see you.

Mordecai Lee:

Thank you for inviting me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the platforms of Kleefisch and Nicholson look similar. His perhaps a bit more strident, and he considers himself the outsider, calling her, from the “same tired political class.” What do you make of Nicholson fighting what he regards as the Republican establishment?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, it’s perhaps the only stance he can take. After all, he can’t put himself to the left of Rebecca Kleefisch, because that’s not a winning formula for Republicans. So he seems to be going for I’m the insurgent, I’m the Trumpier kind of guy, I’m to her right. And generally speaking, I suppose we as voters should remember that we benefit from choices. It’s good to have choices. But that the culture of the Republican Party is very different from that of the Democratic Party. The Republican Party is much more organized and rank and file sort of follow the mainstream, so having a knockdown, drag out primary fight like this is more unusual than usual on the Republican side.

Frederica Freyberg:

Nicholson is even fighting with Speaker Robin Vos, who urged him not to run for governor because it might hurt Republican chances. Does it seem unfathomable to go up against Robin Vos?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, Robin Vos is to a certain extent the highest ranking member of the party within Wisconsin. After Ron Johnson is in Washington. So if he says I’m going to take on the establishment, I’m the Trumpy kind of candidate, then I suppose Robin Vos is as good as any. It seems to be hard to understand where this is going to go. You’d have to go back to 1978, when Congressman Robert Kasten was the Republican candidate for governor, and he was endorsed by the party, at the party’s convention. And then sort of out of nowhere comes a guy named Lee Dreyfuss who had never run for anything. And to everybody’s astonishment, Dreyfuss won the primary and then won the governorship. So if there is a precedent about the outsider challenger of the sort of the establishment, it has happened. There are fairy tales that sometimes happen in politics.

Frederica Freyberg:

Does the primary fight pitting Kleefisch and Nicholson help Evers?

Mordecai Lee:

There are examples in Wisconsin politics where having a very tough primary leads to the winner of the primary losing in the general election, but there are just as equal number of examples like the Lee Dreyfuss one where having a tough primary then gives them momentum to win the general election. So I don’t think there’s sort of any principle here. What really surprised me is how fast they went after each other. I liked your comment about elbows, where he said, I was born in Wisconsin, and silently he’s saying, she wasn’t born in Wisconsin. She only came to Wisconsin to start as an undergrad at Madison. And she’s saying, “Oh, he really wanted to run for U.S. Senate and now he’s angry so he’s running for governor.” On her side, I think that was a bit of an unforced error. Generally speaking, in pre-Trump politics, what a candidate says is, “I welcome so-and-so to the race. I welcome the competition. Voters benefit from it. I look forward to contrasting our qualifications, and I’m confident I’ll win.” I’m not quite sure what the thinking was behind her comment.

Frederica Freyberg:

So speaking of Donald Trump, of those Republican primary candidates, who’s got the better cred with Trump?

Mordecai Lee:

I think it’s Rebecca Kleefisch, because she’s the one who’s standing by the member of the state Assembly who wants to repeal the certification that Joe Biden won Wisconsin. She explicitly said she supports him and she ever so vaguely criticized Speaker Vos for firing his aide and taking away his committee assignments. But on the other hand, I think in terms of style, sort of combativeness, I think Nicholson would appeal more. I’m not sure. I guess to get the endorsement of President Trump, you need to do something about or say something about the 2020 election that the other candidate won’t go as far as saying. And at this point, I’m not sure if there’s any farther they can already go.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, billionaire Richard Uihlein is backing Nicholson with what seems to be a basically sum sufficient funding model or whatever it takes. How does that ratchet up the spending in this race?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, money is the mother’s milk of politics, and especially in the TV era. TV advertising is the thing that really counts. So if you want to be a serious player in a state-wide race, you’ve got to assume you’re going to spend $5, $10, $15 million, in this case perhaps to win the primary. I think what’s going to be interesting about the sort of dynamics of this primary, they’re both going to be well funded. But the fact that there’s a primary means that Republicans will have to vote in the Republican primary for governor. They can’t vote in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. If there hadn’t been a primary for governor on the Republican side, they all would have moved over and voted in that and perhaps distorted the results of the Senate race.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow. Great stuff. Mordecai Lee, thanks very much. Thanks for joining us.

Mordecai Lee:

You’re welcome. Thanks.

Frederica Freyberg:

We have invited Kevin Nicholson for an interview on “Here & Now.”

As we close tonight, we remind you to look for full coverage on the pandemic with our COVID condition reporting at PBSwisconsin.org, and on Monday look there for reporting on Afghan refugees in Wisconsin, a PBS Wisconsin-WPR-WisContext collaboration. And also hear from the journalists on “Central Time” on the Ideas Network Monday afternoon. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Thanks for joining us. Have a good weekend.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.