Virgil Wiebe, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, spoke to Vineeta Sawkar on WCCO Radio about the status of Minnesota immigration cases. After federal officials announced a drawdown of agents in Minnesota, Wiebe provided an update on how the St. Thomas law clinic experiences immigration court cases in the state.
From the conversation:
Wiebe: There is still a lot of fear and uncertainty. There does seem to be a reduction of action according to iceout.org. Over the past two weeks there does seems to have been a reduction of reports, although there are still reports. Seems like tactics have changed from heavily armed folks looking like soldiers to more deceptive enforcement, more targeted enforcement.
Sawkar: When you look at some of these cases, they were just going through the legal process. Is that still possible to go through?
Wiebe: There is something called Operation PARRIS, which is very concerning. It targets over 5,000 fully vetted refugees who have resettled in Minnesota. There’s a presumed concern about these folks, and they are being called into interviews really to look at their cases all over again. There’s a change from over 40 years of one interpretation of whether these people should be detained during this process, immigration services claim that they have the authority to detain these people. That has been put on hold by a lawsuit, thankfully, for at least a time.
