Statement: Amid federal siege, we persist

STATEMENT: As the end to this devastating week nears, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid remains in a place, unimagined — helping victims on the frontlines of a federal siege. Our legal teams live and work largely in Minneapolis, but we also live and work in St. Cloud, Willmar, Duluth and Mankato, and no one’s life is untouched.

With unwavering resolve, we are providing representation, in unprecedented numbers, to fellow Minnesotans who have been violently seized from our streets or walked out of their homes after forceful entry with only the clothes on their backs, if lucky. 

Some of these “takings” were witnessed, while others are known to us because our attorneys have helped children trace their way to the family car left in the street, after a parent was taken.

Or because an attorney’s Legal Aid business card was found among the strewn remains of a client’s belongings. (Thanks to a good Samaritan, we miraculously found that client.)

And, now we are seeing school bus stops as targets for immigration enforcement.

Our Immigration Law Project is one of our nine practice areas and a primary provider of immigration legal representation in Minneapolis and throughout central Minnesota. However, all of our practice areas, which serve vulnerable Minnesotans with free legal help, have been pressed into service as the effects of this federal invasion has curtailed basic rights, orphaned children, stolen breadwinners and left behind lifelong physical and emotional scars.

Whether it’s fending off deportations or housing evictions, serving clients with disability rights matters or entering the fray of public policy fights happening behind the scenes, Legal Aid remains steadfast.

We say to all justice seekers: you may begin to hear a refrain that the tide is turning. That ICE and the CBP are pulling back operations in Minnesota. Some may feel hopeful that it’s ending.

But an end to the intense siege in Minnesota will not be the end. Not until our neighbors, wrongfully detained, are returned home safely; not until all who have been harmed in custody have been provided with appropriate medical care; not until all who have been financially drained (due to loss of income, destruction of property, unjust fees, travel from far flung locales, while tending to trauma) are compensated. Not until the rule of law is, again, the way things are done.

Anguished by the loss of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, we join the community in grieving, knowing and understanding there is no end to the fight for justice. We must stay at it every day — sustained by unmatched community support seen by the world. This common bond buoys us as we meet with clients, visit schools and community centers, hand out business cards (a saving grace, as neighbors and school kids have gotten them one day, and the very next, find themselves in a desperate situation with that card as their lifeline to help). 

Included in this long arc, which indeed bends toward justice, is our continued fight ensuring the rule of law defines what is right and just for our clients and for Minnesota as a whole.

Persist in truth, persist in peace, persist in reclaiming constitutional protections each and every day. Do this for all we have willingly and unwillingly sacrificed to make our communities safe, thriving and whole, again.

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Media contact:
Lisa Ramirez | Lramirez@mylegalaid.org
Communications Director
Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid