Immigration enforcement has ramped up in Minnesota. The Department of Homeland Security says at least 2,000 ICE agents are in the state. In addition, Customs and Border Patrol agents are here arresting people. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said over the weekend that hundreds more agents would join them.
As these agencies ramp up their activity in Minnesota, reports of detainments are almost too much to keep up with.
David Wilson is an immigration attorney with Wilson Law Group. He joined Minnesota Now with Nina Moini to talk about what he’s seeing with immigration cases.
The following has been edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
What is your caseload like, and has it increased in the last week?
The number of calls that we get per day has increased exponentially, from people either calling about someone who has been detained or wanting to know their rights and fearful that they’re going to be detained.
At one point, we were exceeding 500 calls per day. That’s only gone up since last Monday, and with the increase of officers in town over the weekend, the number of calls over the weekend also went up exponentially. So we find ourselves tracking people around the country and trying to litigate their release on a scale that in all my 28 years of practice I’ve never had to attempt.
This weekend we filed at least 10 different actions around the country. But there is a limit to what we can do. [Immigration lawyers are] really communicating with each other a lot about our capacity and who’s available.
We’ve been very lucky that there are larger firms who have litigators who are now interested in participating in this project. I think there’s a flood of lawyers — who may not be immigration lawyers but definitely are litigators and are willing to put their hat out and volunteer some time for the rest to really respond to this moment.
{snip}
What measures that ICE is taking stand out to you as most concerning or illegal?
The one that stands out the most — and it’s likely legal, but it’s nonetheless very intrusive — are license plate readers. And just because a person may have a foreign name, they’re drawing the conclusion that that person needs to be engaged for possible enforcement.
{snip}
The post Minnesota Immigration Attorneys Overwhelmed by Break-Neck Pace of Cases appeared first on American Renaissance.
American RenaissanceRead More
R1
T1
