University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chapter of Voices of Courage for Equity and Social Justice (VOCES) hosted a panel discussion with immigration attorneys to teach attendees about immigration rights and how students can support immigrants on campus.
Immigration attorneys and panelists Matthew Gillhouse and Alayna Connolly said immigration law has noticeably changed under the Trump Administration, mentioning a September federal court case which gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the power to decide whether detainees can receive bond.
Gillhouse said there is “more corruption” in the immigration law system now.
The Trump Administration also removed Temporary Protective Status (TPS) status from several countries such as Venezuela, Afghanistan and Syria, despite the respective U.S. embassies deeming travel to these countries unsafe. TPS is meant for immigrants who cannot safely return back to their country due to issues such as political turmoil or weather disasters..
Connolly, who does a lot of work with unaccompanied minors, said the administration has also changed immigrants’ rights to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a U.S. immigration policy providing temporary protection from deportation and a work permit for two years at a time for children brought into the U.S. before their 16th birthday.
Previously, kids with Special Immigrant Juvenile status could get Deferred Action while waiting to apply for a green card if they were abused or neglected. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently ruled for DACA renewal applications to be processed, but not new ones.
“Right now, the wait [for Deferred Action] is like four or five years, so one of the major changes is that deferred action is no longer an option for those kids,” Connolly said. “It's also getting harder to terminate or defer cases for kids who are in removal proceedings or deportation proceedings since judges aren't as accepting of the fact that kids have Special Immigrant Juvenile status or have other applications pending in other offices.”
Karen Romo, president of the UW-Madison VOCES chapter, outlined what immigrants can do to stay safe in case of an ICE encounter. She warned immigrants to not open the door, remain silent, not to run or resist, not to sign any documents, not to lie and to film and take photos.
Ashley Hagen, another panelist and Associated Students of Madison vice chair, said they hope to team up with VOCES in the future to teach employees specifically how to support international students. The group is also working on a new task force for academic freedom and freedom of expression in response to the crackdown on protest policy with the Expressive Activity Policy.
Melanie Leyva, College Organizer for Voces de la Frontera, spoke about the Community Defense Network, which trains people to be “verifiers” — people who go to hotline ICE sightings to verify whether the call was real to stop misinformation and fearmongering.
Both Connolly and Gillhouse said the best thing immigrants can do while their rights are uncertain is make a plan.
“One thing that we talk a lot about with people who are coming in for intakes is, what are your goals out of this? Do you want to stay detained by your case or do you want to fight your case?” Connolly said. “Do you want to just try and go back to your home country? Or do you want to try and go somewhere else?”
Gillhouse said the whole process is disheartening.
“It feels like so often you're telling people bad news,” Gillhouse said. “You're telling people ‘this is how the government works’ and ‘this is how the law works’, and then they get betrayed by the government and the law, and it's your fault because you told them how it works, and it didn't work that way.”
