Reporter Maureen McKinney recently interviewed Lauren Aronson, who directs the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She says the president’s series of executive orders on immigration upon taking office, shook her clients’ and students’ lives. Court pushback against the president’s birthright citizenship order is a positive sign to Aronson, who continues to try to stay abreast of evolving news on immigration. This is an edited, excerpted version of that interview.
Right out of the gate, the president issued several actions on immigration. As you run an immigration clinic at the U of I, I can imagine it sort of threw your life and your client's lives into chaos, is that so?
Yeah, it did. I teach immigration law, and so not even just in the practical sense, did it run us into chaos, but in the sort of more theoretical sense of just trying to be abreast of what is going on and all of the changes that happened on January 20. My first class was January 21 so on January 20, I stayed up really late trying to read every executive order and see how it was going to both affect my clients in practice, but then also just affect the way I teach immigration law.
What happens with your students in that case? Has that been difficult?
Honestly, there have been changes that will directly impact my clients already, or have already directed the impact my impacted my clients, but because there is so much that can still be done, and so much that was done in the last administration, and so much that has been threatened, it's hard to plan strategies for representation.
Things that …under the last administration, I could say with confidence to my clients, I can no longer say. Understandably, a lot of my clients are terrified, both of being removed from this country and being separated from their own families, and they are seeking reassurances that I can't give them, and then they're seeking those reassurances from my students, and it's a really hard position for my students to be in as well.
They're having to learn some really difficult lessons in lawyering that that normally you wouldn't at this stage. I mean, obviously it's important to be able to tell your clients or your potential clients, bad news, but this is a little more sensitive, I think, then, and it usually is.
For planning purposes. It's been chaotic. Plus, I have a lot of students who are themselves, either entered on a student visa, are green card holders of all different immigration statuses, and so they're also very personally affected in a lot of cases. So it's just a very difficult time to be an Immigration law clinic professor and an immigrant advocate. It's just a really sad moment.
What have been some of the reactions of your clients to the administration's actions on immigration?
Confusion and fear. That was even before the actual actions, right? That was after the election, the next day after the election. So November 8, I had people in my office crying about what was going to happen to them. That has just continued.
A lot of the work that I do is for people who are not necessarily already in the government's radar, people who may be here without status, either because they overstayed a visa or they entered without authorization to do so, but who were not apprehended by immigration authorities, and so they're effectively invisible. And some of those people who are invisible have opportunities to apply for affirmative benefits, but understandably now some of those people are too afraid to apply for those benefits because they think it's a safer choice to just continue to fly under the radar, and I can't even tell them they're wrong, because you really don't know.
What I mostly do is humanitarian-based immigration relief. So I'm not working with,people who are applying for employment visas based on job offers or student visas or things like that. I'm mostly helping people who either suffered persecution in their home country, fear persecution in their home country, or suffered some kind of crime here, whether they were trafficked or a victim of domestic violence or, I help a lot of kids who are abused, abandoned or neglected by their parents.
A lot of those humanitarian forms of relief are the ones in the crosshairs of this administration. So I want my clients to still be able to apply and take advantage of these benefits, but they are ones that the Trump administration has specifically said, ‘Well, that's what we're targeting, and that's what we're going to get rid of.’
There's a form of status called a U nonimmigrant status, which is available for individuals who have suffered substantial physical or mental harm as a result of being a victim of a crime in the United States, who had knowledge of that crime and then cooperated participated in either the investigation or the prosecution of that crime. A that has been in law since, I want to say 2000, 2001-ish, and has helped a lot of people.
And it has also helped all of us because it makes our community safer if people without status are not afraid to go to the police to report crimes that have been committed against them, just it's a kind of common sense public safety issue anyway. That's one of the things right that Trump has specifically said, I want to get rid of that. I don't want that to exist anymore.’
One of the things right that a lot of people are eligible for, but now are hesitant to pursue, because, for one, they don't want to get on the radar and well, and they don't know this, but I guess I know this, right, that's in danger of not existing. But it's also one of the most important ones to pursue, if you can, because it has the longest wait. It's like at this point, I think if you apply for you. You're waiting for at least probably 11 or 12 years.
What were some of the toughest things to respond to?
A really hard one is the cancellation of temporary protected status for Venezuelans, as well as the cancelation of the parole program for (Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans). First of all, my clients are affected by this. I have a lot of clients who are here with TPS from Venezuela. They were safe temporarily and are no longer safe, are now potentially being subject to deportation.
So I have clients in that position who will not have an opportunity to renew any kind of protection that they had, but also are worrying that the protection that they currently have is just going to be ripped out from under them. And I don't think that entering this country without status is an immoral, in an immoral act. Is it technically a crime? Yes, right. It's a misdemeanor to have entered without an inspection and without permission or parole.
But we're also dealing with people who entered lawfully, who followed all of the rules and who are going to potentially find themselves, or have already found themselves in a position where they are now here illegally, and they have now like sort of had a crime thrust upon them, right?
Because they did everything according to the rules at the time, but now the rules are changing, and that's a particularly hard thing for some people to wrap their mind around for themselves, and of course, they're scared. They all came for a reason, and it wasn't just to have a vacation in the United States. We're talking about people from countries that are in really dire situations, and those situations have not improved since the Trump administration took office, and so there's real, genuine fear, and the fear has been the hardest thing, I guess I would say,
Has it been emotionally hard for you to see your clients in suffering like that?
Yes, just ask my therapist or my husband. It's been really rough last three weeks, four weeks, whatever it's been. It was really rough leading up to it after the election, trying to plan and prepare when you didn't know what you were planning or preparing for, and trying desperately to help whoever you could in whatever way you could. In a lot of cases, which ended up being futile anyway. So that was frustrating.
But, yeah, it's been really hard. You try to maintain an even keel. I'm already an emotional person, but I have cried in meetings with clients a lot more in the last three weeks than I ever had before. It's definitely been the hardest time in my career, I don't feel bad about myself. I mean, obviously I'd rather not be dealing with it, but it's obviously, it's the feeling, the empathy that I'm feeling for them, the compassion I'm feeling for them, that makes it so hard.
