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For Minneapolis attorneys John Albanese, Mary Nikolai and Katie Kelley, the immigration arrests unfolding across Minnesota became real in the same place: a daycare where their children are enrolled.

One morning in early January, parents were dropping off their children at a Spanish-immersion daycare in south Minneapolis when immigration agents detained a woman who worked there.

“It was obviously a traumatic moment for everyone involved. At that point it really hit home what was happening,” Albanese recalls. 

Albanese, Nikolai and Kelley are not immigration lawyers. Albanese is a shareholder at a Minneapolis law firm that typically handles complex civil litigation and class-action lawsuits. Nikolai primarily practices data privacy and consumer protection law and Kelley practices family law. 

But the daycare arrest pushed the three attorneys into a new role: challenging immigration detentions in federal court.

Since the beginning of so-called “Operation Metro Surge” in December, attorneys in Minnesota have filed more than 1,000 cases challenging the legality of immigration arrests and detentions.

Many of those filings came from lawyers who don’t normally practice immigration law.

In the days after the daycare arrest, Nikolai began working to help free the detained employee, who she said had been seeking asylum before she was arrested.

The woman was transferred to Texas and detained for nearly a month before eventually being returned to Minnesota and released.

Nikolai says she began reaching out across her legal network looking for help.

“I just basically started reaching out to every lawyer I know who I thought would maybe know somebody in Texas, or know something about immigration work or know something about habeas petitions,” she said. 

That effort became the first of several habeas corpus petitions she would go on to help file.

Nikolai says those petitions can help intervene before someone is moved to a detention center in another state.

“They're being sent out of the state with limited access to communications with their family, with attorneys. So inaction is, I think, the worst thing that anybody can be doing right now.”

At the same time, Albanese and colleagues at his firm were also beginning to take on cases.

The work meant diving quickly into a legal field most of them had never practiced before.

Using habeas corpus to challenge detentions

The legal tool many of the volunteer attorneys relied on is called habeas corpus, a longstanding legal principle that allows courts to review whether someone is being lawfully detained.

Albanese says the name can sound more mysterious than it actually is.

“It simply means that the court has had this longstanding power to evaluate when somebody's detained, you can go and challenge their detainment,” he said. 

Through word of mouth and connections with advocacy groups, volunteer lawyers began getting matched with detained immigrants who needed representation.

Albanese says attorneys in his Minneapolis office alone filed more than 40 habeas petitions.

“I think if you spoke to the people in our office, everyone felt like we had almost no choice. It was a moral imperative to do it.” 

Legal advocates say the response quickly expanded beyond a handful of law firms.

Hanne Sandison, who directs immigration legal services at the Minneapolis-based organization The Advocates for Human Rights, says Minnesota already has a strong network of pro bono attorneys. But the recent enforcement surge brought hundreds more forward.

Sandison said many of them reached out with the same question: “What can I do? How can I be helpful?”

She said the surge of volunteers shows how quickly Minnesota’s legal community mobilized.

“The scale of assistance and the number of habeas cases really points to how coordinated and cooperative and incredible this legal community has been the past few months,” she said. 

Sandison said volunteer attorneys helped hundreds of detainees receive legal assistance from volunteer lawyers. 

Kelley had previously worked with immigrant families preparing documents known as designation of parental authority, or DOPAs, which allow parents to designate temporary guardians for their children if they are detained.

But detention cases required a different kind of legal response.

“There’s a lot of people who want to volunteer, but you don't know how,” she said. “So I just sought out different avenues, and then I organized a team at my firm so that I could be kind of the point person and triage cases within my firm.”

Kelley says attorneys quickly began sharing information and resources with one another as they learned the process.

“There’s not a lot of gate keeping. It’s like, ‘here are templates, here are things that have worked or didn't work for us.’ There's lots of resources available, which is really cool.”

Attorneys say many of the people detained had legal status — including refugees who had already been admitted to the United States but were still navigating paperwork to adjust their status.

Others had pending asylum cases or other immigration protections.

Lawyers say petitions often had to be filed quickly because detainees were frequently transferred out of Minnesota, sometimes with limited access to communication with family members or attorneys.

The work is entirely volunteer, and attorneys say the filing fee for a habeas petition is about $5.

Despite the steep learning curve, many of the petitions were successful.

In some cases, judges ordered detainees released. In others, the government released people before a ruling came down.

Albanese says the courts moved quickly once petitions were filed.

“The bench here really stepped up and has been super fast about getting through these petitions and making sure that filing a habeas actually has a practical effect.”

Legal advocates say the surge of volunteer attorneys helped dozens of people challenge their detention in federal court.

In recent weeks, attorneys say the number of new cases has slowed.

But the network of volunteer lawyers that formed during the surge — including attorneys like Albanese, Nikolai and Kelley — remains in place.

And they say if immigration enforcement ramps up again, Minnesota’s legal community is ready to respond.

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Hundreds of Minnesota attorneys volunteered to help challenge immigration detentions in federal court during a surge of arrests, forming a rapid pro bono legal network across the state. 

Hundreds of Minnesota attorneys volunteered to help free people detained by ICE

Tim Evans for MPR News

Courtesy of Gustafson Gluek PLLC

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Courtesy of Berger Montague

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Hundreds of Minnesota attorneys volunteered to help free people detained by ICE

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