Want to know what it’s like to be a lawyer for immigrants under the anti-immigrant Trump administration? To work in a legal aid office like the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota? Here’s a personal story from one of our hard-working attorneys:

I really like my job as a nonprofit immigration attorney very much. I am deeply dedicated to this work and I appreciate the opportunity to do something I believe in as a livelihood. But I am also drained, depressed, angry, and really afraid for so many people in this country who any day could have their entire world torn apart.

The majority of people being picked up by ICE under this administration have absolutely no criminal history, or just minor driving violations like most people who ever drive. I saw a recent cite saying 100 people per day are currently being arrested and detained by ICE. 

But unlike people fortunate enough to be a U.S. citizen or have documented status, undocumented people are being arrested and losing everything: their families, their jobs, their homes, their safety, and their dreams.

I use the word “fortunate” for U.S. citizens or people with secure immigration status because we should acknowledge it’s a question of sheer luck for the most part: what country you’re born in, or who your family members are, whether you fit one of the extremely few and excruciatingly specific categories of some other type of immigration eligibility, and whether you have the finances and connections and knowledge to file the documents and pay the fees and wait the years until you obtain status. To say nothing of whether you happen to be “fortunate” as to your skin tone, facial features, accent, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc. so as to avoid a lifetime of continued systemic injustice, harassment, micro aggressions, or worse by both public and private actors in this country. But that’s a (very) connected yet separate issue.

I’m lately seeing a fair number of good people who I would expect to be aggressively fighting for people so disenfranchised and under attack, just sitting by silently. I’m also seeing a lot of good people very misinformed and regurgitating BS about “getting in line” and “the law is the law” and so on. There is no line, and we all should know the law is not the law, neutral and benign (not for people of color, not for immigrants). When was the last time you were arrested and/or ejected from the United States, the country that is your home, after a driving ticket?

To those people, I’d just like to say, please, open your eyes and ears. People’s lives are being destroyed. Children are losing their parents, spouses their partners. People are being deported to countries where they have nothing and are sometimes then being killed. U.S. taxpayers are spending insane quantities of money paying to keep harmless people, who were largely working, paying taxes, and supporting their families and communities, in jails and detention centers instead.

And besides that, millions of people in this country, many of whom coincidentally are absolutely necessary to our quality of life (providing our food, cleaning our buildings, building our homes, and so much more) are living in utter terror that they could be next.

Your silence is complicity, and your vocal ignorance is worse. Many people in government fully intend for this to continue and accelerate, for reasons of racism, nativism, and greed. (There are great profits to be made by the already vastly wealthy and politically powerful private prison industry.) The time to speak out, fight back, and demand otherwise is yesterday. Please. Let’s get on it.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the challenges to the Trump travel ban in their October 2017 term. In the meantime, they will allow the travel ban and refugee admissions ban but only for people “who have no connection to the United States at all.” The injunction remains in effect and the Trump bans may not be applied to people with family or institutional connections to the United States.

Becoming a U.S. citizen was “a dream come true” for Norma Garza Montemayor, one of many immigrants who come to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) for help in naturalization. Citizenship applications make up the biggest category of ILCM clients, as immigrants across Minnesota share Norma’s dream.

Immigrants make up 13.5 percent of the national population but only 8.3 percent of Minnesota’s population in 2015. The “Getting to know new Minnesotans” series explores some of Minnesota’s immigration picture. Click to read:

• Part One: How many immigrants?
• Part Two: Where do they come from?
• Part Three: Who can get in line?

To become citizens, immigrants go through the lengthy and expensive process of naturalization. While there are some exceptions for spouses of U.S. citizens, immigrants serving in the U.S. military, and children, the general requirements are that the immigrant applying for citizenship must:

• Be at least 18 years of age;
• Be a lawful permanent resident (green card holder);
• Have resided in the United States as a lawful permanent resident for at least five years;
• Have been physically present in the United States for at least 30 months;
• Be a person of good moral character;
• Be able to speak, read, write and understand the English language;
• Have knowledge of U.S. government and history; and
• Be willing and able to take the Oath of Allegiance.

In 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 7,533 Minnesota immigrants became U.S citizens. Across the country, 730,259 immigrants became U.S. citizens in 2015.

The naturalization process starts with filing Form N-400, Application for Naturalization and paying a $725 application fee, which includes am $85 biometrics fee. After the government runs an FBI background check and reviews the applicant’s immigration history, an interview is scheduled. Applicants must pass English (reading, writing, and speaking) and civics tests.

Where do Minnesota’s new Americans come from? While the largest group of immigrants in the state comes from Mexico, the largest group of newly-naturalized citizens in 2015 came from Somalia — 1,021 new U.S. citizens from Somalia. The second-largest group (501) came from Ethiopia and the third-largest (475) from Burma. Mexican immigrants were fourth, with 425 new citizens in 2015.

These numbers reflect the changing face of immigration in Minnesota. Almost half of Minnesota’s immigrants are already citizens. While Mexican immigrants make up the largest group, many of them have been here for decades and have already become citizens.  Newer immigrants come from other countries, and make up most of the current applicants for citizenship. Here’s the full list of countries of origin for Minnesota’s naturalized citizens in 2015, from the Department of Homeland Security.

Leading countries of birth
Bhutan	91
Burma	475
Cambodia	106
Cameroon	113
Canada	98
China	211
Ethiopia	501
Ghana	78
India	316
Iraq	121
Kenya	282
Laos	371
Liberia	350
Mexico	425
Nigeria	181
Philippines	178
Somalia	1,021
Thailand	279
Ukraine	89
Vietnam	295
Other	1,951
Unknown	1

ILCM’s Minnesota Family Naturalization Project focuses on increasing the number of permanent residents in Minnesota who naturalize as U.S. citizens while also collaborating across sectors, with law enforcement and grassroots organizations, to promote the importance of citizenship. ILCM works with clients to file the citizenship application and accompanies applicants to the citizenship interview. Many naturalization cases are placed with private attorneys trained and supervised through our Pro Bono Project.

If you would like help with naturalization, you can call 651-641-1011 during the following intake hours to to schedule an appointment to speak to a legal staff member:

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday
9 am – 11 am
2 pm – 4 pm

If you are an attorney, and would like to volunteer to help with naturalization, you can get more information and fill out the Pro Bono application form here.

On June 15, the fifth anniversary of DACA, the Department of Homeland Security said that, “The June 15, 2012 memorandum that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will remain in effect.”

The continuation of DACA represents a reversal of Trump’s campaign promises to repeal DACA, and will anger many of his anti-immigrant supporters. The DACA program, which has offered protection to about 800,000 young people, has wide public backing:

“But once in office, Mr. Trump faced a new reality: the political risks of targeting for deportation a group of people who are viewed sympathetically by many Americans. In some cases, the immigrants did not know they were in the country illegally. Many attended American schools from the time they were in kindergarten.”

The same DHS memorandum officially rescinded DAPA and DACA+, saying that “there is no credible path forward to litigate the currently enjoined policy.”

President Barack Obama established DACA in 2012. In 2015, he tried to expand DACA to cover more young people (DACA+) and to establish DAPA – Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents. (DAPA would not have covered parents of DACA recipients, because DACA recipients had no path to permanent legal residence or citizenship.)

DACA+ would have removed the requirement that DACA applicants be “under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012.” DACA+ also allowed a three-year work permit extension, rather than the two-year extension allowed in the first DACA orders.

Texas and 25 other states sued to stop DAPA and DACA+. They succeeded, with the district court issuing a preliminary injunction, which was then affirmed by the 5th Circuit. The Supreme Court, in a one-line decision issued June 23, 2016, allowed the preliminary injunction to stand. That ruling sent the case back to the district court for trial.

The June 15 2017 memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security means that the government will not defend DAPA and DACA+ in the district court.

That leaves in place the official USCIS guidelines for DACA:

Guidelines

You may request DACA if you:

1. Were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012;
2. Came to the United States before reaching your 16th birthday;
3. Have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007, up to the present time;
4. Were physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012, and at the time of making your request for consideration of deferred action with USCIS;
5. Had no lawful status on June 15, 2012;
6. Are currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States; and
7. Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor,or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.

Age Guidelines

Anyone requesting DACA must have been under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012. You must also be at least 15 years or older to request DACA, unless you are currently in removal proceedings or have a final removal or voluntary departure order…

The DHS memorandum included a link to a Frequently Asked Questions page, which has this to say about work permits:

“DACA recipients will continue to be eligible as outlined in the June 15, 2012 memorandum. DACA recipients who were issued three-year extensions before the district court’s injunction will not be affected, and will be eligible to seek a two-year extension upon their expiration. No work permits will be terminated prior to their current expiration dates.”

All of this leaves DACA recipients where they were before the June 15 DHS memorandum: with no path to legal residence or citizenship, but with temporary and limited protection, dependent on continuing presidential executive orders. And that’s not a secure position, as a DHS spokesperson pointed out in a New York Times interview:

“There has been no final determination made about the DACA program, which the president has stressed needs to be handled with compassion and with heart,” said Jonathan Hoffman, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the department. He added that John F. Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security, “ has noted that Congress is the only entity that can provide a long-term solution to this issue.”

Want to read more?

• Text of June 15 2017 DHS memorandum rescinding DAPA and DACA+
• FAQs for June 15, 2017 memorandum
• Rules for DACA eligibility
• Kelly revokes Obama order shielding immigrant parents of U.S. citizens (Washington Post, 6/16/17)
• ‘Dreamers’ to stay in U.S. for now, but long-term fate unclear  (New York Times, 6/16/17)

From January 20 to the end of March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in our region  increased by 80 percent over 2016. That brought a big increase in need for full representation, especially for people in removal proceedings.

Timely, unprecedented support from several Minnesota foundations and hundreds of donors from across the country (including several who made donations in honor of Mr. Donald J. Trump), enabled the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) to hire critical support – two new attorneys who will be able to do life-changing work for Minnesota’s immigrants and refugees.

Meet Julia Decker

Julia Decker first joined ILCM as a full-time, one-year Robina Public Interest Fellow in 2014, shortly after her graduation from the University of Minnesota Law School. During this year at ILCM, she joined a team of lawyers from ILCM, the Center for New Americans, and Faegre Baker Daniels who appealed a removal case up to the U.S. Supreme Court and won in 2015. After her fellowship year, she went back to the University of Minnesota Law School for two years of teaching immigration law and supervising law students representing immigrants and refugees in their immigration cases. Now she is back as an ILCM Community Defense Project staff attorney to provide full representation in removal defense cases and provide Know Your Rights presentations in the community.

Julia is excited to be back with ILCM, advocating for Minnesota’s immigrants and refugees both in court and in the community. She grew up in St. Louis Park and brings a lifetime of engagement with issues of concern to immigrant communities in Minnesota. She speaks Spanish and Mandarin, as well as English.

Meet Margaret Martin

Margaret Martin comes to her position as ILCM’s new Legal Director from New York City, where she served as Director of the Unaccompanied Minors Department at Catholic Charities. Before that, she was a clinical law professor for five years in the Immigration and International Human Rights Clinic at Seton Hall University, and in the Asylum and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Connecticut. She also worked with the American Bar Association in Uzbekistan and in a clerkship with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of Boston University and the Columbia University School of Law. Her focus on human rights issues emerged early. “I think that protecting the rights of immigrants is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time,” she says.

Since moving here, Margaret has made time to check out her new neighborhood in Minneapolis. She has already used the Midtown Greenway to bike to work, and gone on an inaugural run around the lakes. She says, “it’s a beautiful city.”

As requests for legal presentations and representation more than doubled since November’s election, ILCM has been working overtime to meet increased needs for support and representation. As Julia and Margaret hit the ground running, they are already making a big contribution to meeting those needs.

Legal assistant Gail Martinson works full-time on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — DACA at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). Since 2012, she has helped more than 1,200 Minnesota DREAMers apply for DACA status or renewal, and other ILCM staff and volunteers have helped even more DACA applicants. With DACA approaching its fifth anniversary on June 15, she recalls helping some clients apply for the DACA status, then apply for renewal two years later, and then apply for a second renewal.

To understand DACA, imagine growing up in Minneapolis, going to school, playing softball and soccer at the park, and dreaming of college one day. Then, when you are fifteen and eager for drivers’ ed classes, you discover that you are different. You don’t have a social security number. You find out your family’s big secret: you and your parents are undocumented. They brought you across the border when you were three years old. Because you are undocumented, you cannot get a drivers’ license. You cannot legally work. You cannot go to college. If the immigration police find you, you will be sent back to a country you do not know at all. And there is no way to fix this.

For hundreds of thousands of young people who came to the United States as children, that was life before DACA. They called themselves DREAMers, as in the American Dream, the dream that they shared but that was legally out of reach.

One of Gail Martinson’s early clients was valedictorian of her class, “a brilliant mind who just had to stop.”

“Her educational life was over because she couldn’t go to college,”  Gail recalls. “She was out of school for two or three years before DACA and now she has been able to re-enroll in school.”

Before DACA, Gail says, “So many kids – especially young men – just dropped out. There was no reason to graduate from high school. DACA has given these kids a reason to stay in school and graduate.”

The DREAMers organized and asked Congress to pass the DREAM Act, to give them a path to legal residence and citizenship. They explained, over and over, that they felt Minnesotan, or Iowan, or Californian, that they felt American. Congress would not listen.

So, in 2012, President Barack Obama established DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals —by executive order. While only Congress can make laws establishing routes to permanent legal residence, the president’s executive order granted some protection for DREAMers. Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion, not a grant of lawful status.. Deferred action means a promise that, even though the government could prosecute and deport a DREAMer, it would not do so — at least for a specific period of time, for those who went through the application and screening process and paid hundreds of dollars in fees.

On June 15, 2012, the Department of Homeland Security announced the rules for DACA — undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before the age of 16, had resided in the U.S. since June 2007 and met other requirements could request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years. In 2014, DHS announced rules for a two-year renewal, and in 2016, for another two-year renewal. More than 750,000 young people applied for and received DACA protection.

In a survey of ILCM clients, DREAMers described the life-changing impact:

I feel that I can now live a better life. I am able to work legally and I think that DACA almost takes a load off your shoulders. Personally, I don’t have to feel ashamed when I apply for a job now. DACA has made me a more confident, empowered individual.

DACA has had a positive impact on my life. Before, I didn’t make enough money and was worried about how I would provide for my family. Thanks to DACA, I was able to obtain my GED. After that, I took a nursing assistant course and a trained medication aide course. I passed both and found out I enjoy helping people. As a result, I took another course and I am now an Emergency Medical Technician.  I will be working in the ambulances saving lives and that has inspired me to achieve more. My next goal is to be a paramedic or something else in the medical field. Without DACA, this would have been impossible.

DACA has provided me hope that even though I’m from a minority, a higher education is still something I can acquire. To me it’s the proof that the United States of America is one of the countries that allows immigrants to have an opportunity to become successful and improves our way of life.

What happens to DACA now, with a new and hostile administration in Washington? Nobody knows for sure. Revocations of DACA status and deportations of DACA recipients have risen sharply. (Read Jessica Colotl’s story here.) President Trump has said different things at different times, sometimes threatening to end DACA entirely and sometimes saying DACA recipients “shouldn’t be worried.

In 2012, almost two-thirds of U.S. adults supported DACA, and public support remains strong.

The current DACA executive order runs out next year. If Trump wants to keep DACA, he will need to issue a new executive order extending the program by June 15, 2018.

UPDATE: On June 15, the fifth anniversary of DACA, the Department of Homeland Security said that, “The June 15, 2012 memorandum that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will remain in effect.”  The same DHS memorandum officially rescinded DAPA and DACA+, saying that “there is no credible path forward to litigate the currently enjoined policy.” For details, see DACA will stay, but administration says no to DAPA, expanded DACA.

 

The Trump administration appealed the Fourth Circuit’s preliminary injunction against Trump’s travel ban to the U.S. Supreme Court. Under normal timing, the Supreme Court would decide whether to hear the case at all, and neither that decision nor actual arguments on the case would happen until after the Court’s summer recess.

Instead, the Trump administration is asking for an expedited ruling, before the Court’s summer recess. The appeal also asks the Supreme Court to order:

1. A stay of the Fourth Circuit preliminary injunction against the travel ban until after the review is heard;
2. A stay of the Hawaii Federal District Court preliminary injunction against the travel ban and refugee ban parts of the executive order. (The district court order was mostly affirmed by the Ninth Circuit after the Trump motion was filed.)

If the Supreme Court granted both of these requests, the travel ban would go into effect some time in June. That is also problematic, argues Marty Lederman, a constitutional law scholar currently at Georgetown University, who previously served as a Deputy Attorney General. According to Lederman, the executive order set the term of the travel ban at 90 days, and that means it would expire before the Court returned from its summer recess:

“Section 2(c) of the Order provides that “the entry into the United States of nationals of [the six designated] countries be suspended for 90 days from the effective date of this order.”  And Section 14 of the Order specifically provides that the “effective date” of the Order was 12:01 a.m. on March 16.  Accordingly, the E.O. itself provides that the suspension prescribed in Section 2(c) ends at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, June 14, whether or not any courts have enjoined its implementation in the interim.”

The Supreme Court has two options at this point:

1. It could agree to hear the appeal, and grant the stays of the lower court injunctions. If it did this, the travel ban would go into effect but, no matter how the time is counted, would expire before a Supreme Court hearing on the case some time after October 1;
2. It could agree to hear the appeal, but deny the stays. That would leave the lower court injunctions in place until the next Supreme Court term.

This all seems a lot like inside baseball, but if you want to follow the story further, here are some places to start:

• One more court says no to Trump travel ban (Immigration News blog, 6/12/17)
• Trump administration to Supreme Court: Give us travel ban now, rule on it later (Vox, 6/2/17)
• The Supreme Court’s Options in the Travel Ban Case (New York Times, 6/2/17)
• Trump turns to Supreme Court to move forward on travel ban (Washington Post, 6/2/17)
• Trump Administration Lawyers Urge Supreme Court to Bring Back His Revised Travel Plan (Los Angeles Times, 6/1/17)
• A simple reason to deny cert. in Trump v. IRAP: because the entry ban expires in 12 days, anyway
• More on the Effective Date of the Entry Ban and the Hawaii Injunction (Response to Will Baude) (Just Security blog, 6/3/17)

Every two years, Congress huffs and puffs about immigration reform. Every two years, it does nothing. Although everybody acknowledges that the U.S. immigration system is broken, the last major immigration legislation was passed in 1996. That legislation was more about deportation and punishment than reform.

Piecemeal proposals now before Congress now echo failures of the past, like the foolish and punitive Davis-Oliver Act, HR2431, which failed to pass in 2013 and 2015. The Trump budget proposes withholding funding for jurisdictions that do not help enforce immigration laws. Aimed at “sanctuary cities,” the provision would codify an anti-sanctuary executive order that has already been halted by the courts. The budget also calls for funding more immigration officers, more border patrol officers, and more jail cells for immigrants. Like all presidential budgets, this one is a wish list, with not much likely to pass as proposed.

Competing interests want different fixes to various temporary worker programs, such as scaling back the H-1B visa program for highly skilled technical workers, protecting undocumented farm workers with a “blue card,” protecting veterans from deportation, and doing something to change the investor visa.

Some of these bills might pass. Most will not. None of them offers anything like the comprehensive immigration reform that is needed to fix this broken system.

The biggest changes in immigration come not from Congress, but from the Trump administration’s push to arrest and deport as many people as possible, regardless of family ties, length of residence in the United States, good character, or humanitarian considerations. The new policy is to “take the shackles off” ICE and Border Patrol agents, removing any limits on who is targeted for immediate deportation. Early on, the New York Times reported:

“But for those with ICE badges, perhaps the biggest change was the erasing of the Obama administration’s hierarchy of priorities, which forced agents to concentrate on deporting gang members and other violent and serious criminals, and mostly leave everyone else alone….

“Two officials in Washington said that the shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged pro-Trump political comments and banter that struck the officials as brazen or gung-ho, like remarks about their jobs becoming ‘fun.’ Those who take less of a hard line on unauthorized immigrants feel silenced, the officials said.”

This change of direction seems larger than anything Congress is likely to do.

 

 

Minnesota REAL ID was one of the first orders of business that the state legislature worked on this session and one of the last bills signed into law. The federal REAL ID act, signed by President Bush in 2005, requires proof of U.S. citizenship for a ‘compliant’ license that can be used as identification to enter some federal buildings and board flights. Thirteen states also provide for a second kind of license, ‘non-compliant’ licenses that are available to all residents regardless of citizenship status.

Minnesota is one of the last states to bring its own licenses into compliance. ILCM and advocates knew that the issue that stalled the bill in 2016, licenses for the undocumented, would once again be in play this year. This year’s fight over adopting REAL ID included a protracted debate around granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

The key issue of disagreement between the House and the Senate versions of the REAL ID bill was the immigration issue. The House bill required proof of legal status for receiving any Minnesota driver’s license, while the Senate version effectively did the same by preventing the Department of Public Safety from changing its rules on requirements for a license.  This anti-rulemaking provision sought to move the current prohibition on driver’s licenses from administrative rules into a harder-to-change statute.

The House approved their version 72 to 58, mostly along party lines. The Senate, however, failed to pass their bill, with the restrictive language, by a 29-32 vote. The Senate brought back the bill without the anti-immigrant language and it passed with broad bipartisan support.

A conference committee was called to work out the difference and after several meetings, it eventually passed a clean REAL ID bill that did not restrict rulemaking on licenses for immigrants. The governor signed that bill.

Unfortunately, the fight wasn’t over: it had simply moved elsewhere. At what seemed like the last minute of the legislative session, language restricting driver’s licenses for immigrants was inserted into the public safety omnibus funding bill. The regular session ended without agreement on most spending bills and the anti-immigrant language was now included in the global debate about public safety, judiciary funding and the possibility of a government shutdown. Ultimately, as part of an agreement to avoid a government shutdown, the anti-rulemaking, anti-immigrant language became part of the global budget negotiations and was signed into law by the governor.

That may not be the end of the story. Immigrant leaders and community members ultimately spent the final week of the session protesting the bill and sought a veto from the Governor, all to no avail. While Governor Dayton signed the omnibus funding bills, he line-item vetoed funding for the House and Senate, essentially forcing legislators to come back for further negotiations if they want to continue to be paid. One of his explicit demands is a removal of the anti-immigrant language from the Omnibus Public Safety bill. After meeting with leaders from the community and ILCM’s executive director, Dayton also promised to  continue to meet with immigrant community leaders and committed his Administration to doing everything it can to protect immigrants over the remainder of his term.

Throughout this entire process, your phone calls and messages to legislators urging support of immigrants and their families made a real difference. One legislator told me they’d received 15 calls about REAL ID in just one morning! More than 300 calls were made via Action Alerts from ILCM, and probably at least as many more by people who made calls but did not report them on the page.

While we are obviously disappointed with the final outcome, we are hopeful that some new opportunities arose to help build a more welcoming state and to build on-going support to restore driver’s licenses for all in the near future. ILCM and the immigrant community thank each of you for your efforts and support. The fight to make Minnesota a welcoming state for all people is going strong and we are in it together. If you aren’t already receiving our Action Alerts, sign up here and follow us on Facebook.

by Nick Rea, Advocacy & Policy Intern

On Mother’s Day, Ricardo Levins Morales filmed an MTC officer asking Ariel Vences-Lopez about his immigration status. That’s not supposed to happen, but it did. Later, Vences-Lopez was arrested and tasered, then held in custody by the Hennepin County Sheriff, then turned over to immigration officials. As of June 12, when this article was written, an emergency stay of removal had been granted while the immigration court considers motions submitted by his attorneys. Vences-Lopez is represented by Danielle Robinson Briand in the immigration proceeding and another attorney is representing him in the Hennepin County court proceedings.

MTC has said the officer had no business asking about immigration status, that this is not their policy or practice.

“This afternoon, community members and partners alerted me to a situation in which one of my part time officers was witnessed asking an individual whether he was in the state illegally. I immediately called for an Internal Affairs investigation to gather the details about this incident and to report back to me as quickly as possible.

“It is not the practice of the Metro Transit police to inquire about the immigration status of our riders. …”

The officer who questioned Vences-Lopez resigned from the MTC, where he worked part-time, but is still employed as a full-time police officer in New Hope.

The MTC officer asking about legal status was only the first violation of policy and practice – Vences-Lopez was held in secret, his name was “redacted” from the MTC arrest report, and inquiries about the case were stalled, evaded, or just not answered. According to the Pioneer Press, which followed the story closely, officials said that the report contained all the information that would be released. When the newspaper pressed MTC to identify the specific provision of the state Data Privacy Act that authorized hiding the name of the person arrested, they conferred with attorneys and then finally released his name.

A carefully documented blog post by Tony Webster, who identifies himself as a “web engineer, public records researcher, and policy nerd,” raises important questions, including:

“Surely the Chief knew his officer had tasered the young man and booked him into jail, so why did the public find out for the first time on May 24 that he went to jail, and on May 25 that he was tasered?

“Was the arrest record suppressed from public view, or was it just a coincidence of timing? Is there a policy on when arrests are suppressed from the jail roster and the reasons why an arrest can be manually suppressed?”

Webster included links to the official statements from the MTC and Hennepin County Sheriff in his blog post on May 27, observing:

 “Neither statement addresses the full gamut of questions, nor details the timeline in how Metro Transit addressed the controversy. The statements said Metro Transit found out the man was in ICE custody because a Pioneer Press reporter told them so, late Friday night. Chair Duininck said prior to learning of the deportation order, the agency was working on possibly placing the Metro rider in a diversion program or having charges dropped.

“Both statements seemed to imply Metro Transit was given false information, perhaps by officials at the Hennepin County jail. Chief Harrington stated, “we understood that Vences-Lopez had been released from the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office,” and Chair Duininck said, “At the time we were told the rider had been released from custody, he had actually been in ICE custody for nearly a week.” The statements promised to look into why the agency was allegedly given inaccurate information, and promised to uncover “what went wrong.”

 

Read the rest of the story here: MTC and immigration video: The rest of the story