An immigration lawyer shares what a drawdown of federal agents could mean for his clients

NINA MOINI: Throughout the surge of ICE agents the last two months, we've periodically checked in with Minneapolis immigration attorney David Wilson. He's on the line now to talk about what the end of the surge would look like for his clients. Thank you for being with us again, David.

DAVID WILSON: No, thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: I wonder how you are responding to this impending drawdown of agents according to, again, the head of ICE, Tom Homan.

DAVID WILSON: I'm glad to hear it. I'm a little apprehensive as to what it means. I do think that we've seen signs that the government is starting to pivot to other focuses and going after particular individuals or countries on the court docket, for example. And so it'll be nice if they're not arresting and detaining everyone on the streets every day. But I don't trust that this is the last we've heard of this either.

NINA MOINI: What is this going to mean for the thousands of people who've already been arrested or detained by ICE? What are the next steps there?

DAVID WILSON: Well, what we've seen so far is that the federal courts have been very willing to push back on this arbitrary detention of people and denying people the right to seek a hearing so they can post a bond or just get released because they weren't even a target of any particular warrant or other action. And so I think that sent a pretty significant message to the administration that they're running into a judicial wall here in many respects.

And so they may catch them, but a lot of people were starting to find ways to get attention from the federal courts and the federal courts have been consistently intervening. So those individuals now who have been subjected to this, many of them may go back to what they were doing before, which is applying for asylum or other protections from the immigration court or applications that were otherwise pending with USCIS before they were detained.

And so, for many people, this is a return to what they were already doing. They were following the law. They were working through a process that was put in place many years ago, and they're just going to continue to go doing what they're supposed to be doing.

NINA MOINI: What about just the overwhelm in the system right now and for attorneys like yourself who have all of these cases? Do you see that coming to an end at any point?

DAVID WILSON: It'll be a while before the immigration court docket itself is starting to change-- the number of people arriving in the United States across the border, for example, has changed. And it started changing even during the Biden administration in the last year. And so the number of new files being created for the immigration court is down tremendously. It's got to be a fraction of what it was. And so that gives them a great deal of capacity to then focus on finishing cases.

For a long time, they're spending a lot of energy just trying to process them in and get them started, but couldn't get to the point where they could actually schedule the final hearings. That's not the case anymore. Now they can dedicate a lot more energy to towards completing cases and so people where they stand under the law.

And so in the coming months, I think we'll see the wait time can continue to drop in terms of how many months someone is waiting. At one point, it was almost three years. Now I think it's closer to 20 months. And so that improvement should continue in the system over time.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. This idea of some of the cases we're hearing some reporting from NPR that dozens of Somali immigrants with asylum cases in the US have been notified that their hearings have been fast tracked and rescheduled for this month or next month, instead of a year or two from now. Why do you think that that is happening at this time? Do you think that'll be more of a trend?

DAVID WILSON: I think it's happening at this time because of politics. The judicial docket can't be influenced by the executive branch, but the immigration courts are under the Department of Justice. And given the president's comments regarding certain countries over the last 60 days, it's not surprising to see that suddenly the Department of Justice is finding ways to create separate dockets to expedite these cases and to assign them to judges from out of the area, to go from maybe having a hearing in six months from now to having one in six days from now.

And that sudden acceleration is very unique to these individuals. It's very clearly a political act, not a judicial act. And it just says government is deciding what its priorities are, which is unfortunate, because it's not fair to the people who've also been waiting a long time for a hearing.

As much as the individuals who are affected do want to see a judge, there are other people who've been waiting for years well before them. And so they're just being put, again, on the back burner while the administration manipulates the docket to bring all these individuals from Somalia or Somali-speaking regions of Ethiopia to the front and center so they're all heard in the next 30 days or so.

NINA MOINI: As you continue to work over the next few months, assuming that the drawdown occurs, how has this changed your approach to what you do and perhaps the approach of some of your other colleagues? Do you feel like there are lasting effects for your work as well?

DAVID WILSON: I think what's happened in the last 30 days, as it relates to our work, is that we have to approach everything as enforcement first. And that means there's always a risk that no matter how much we try to communicate that this person's here lawfully, this person is following the law, that doesn't seem to resonate with anyone. And so we have to be prepared with what's our plan B, which is really how do you play defense, against someone who's put their fingers in their ears or closing their eyes to what's right in front of them.

And so it's taken a year for the approach that this administration has for immigration to really show itself in its full effect. And so something as simple as even applying for citizenship is something that maybe attorneys like myself would have celebrated and taken as a sure thing with some people who have always followed the law, now we can't.

In fact, even within Minneapolis, there are now two new assistant US attorneys who have been brought in from a different agency specifically to start looking at denaturalization. And so as much as this drawdown is maybe taking officers off the street and harassing people randomly for no cause now we're going to see a shift to the administration using the agencies and the court to try to do the same thing.

NINA MOINI: David, thank you, as always, for sharing your perspective with us. Really appreciate your time.

DAVID WILSON: No, you're welcome. Thank you for having me today.

NINA MOINI: That was immigration attorney David Wilson from Wilson Law Group in Minneapolis.