jews d

in
the

Detainee Defenders

A diverse team works to defend Iraqi immigrants from deportation.

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

ttorney Nora Youkhana calls it “that day.”
It was Sunday, June 11, 2017, the day she
received frantic telephone calls from peo-
ple in her Iraqi Christian community.
Early that morning, officers of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) had begun arresting
people born in Iraq who had lived in the Detroit
area for decades. These were longtime Michigan
residents who had old — often very old —depor-
tation orders. Nearly all legal immigrants, they’d
run afoul of immigration law sometime in the past
several decades. But they’d never been deported
and lived in their communities, raising families,
working and reporting periodically to ICE.
Now everything was changed: Picked up on
Sunday, the detainees expected to be on airplanes

14

April 12 • 2018

jn

to Iraq on Thursday or Friday. They needed imme-
diate help.
As the day wore on and the number of arrests
increased, frightened people called on Youkhana
and her friend from law school, Nadine Yousif
Kalasho, for information and help. The two young
attorneys staff an office called CODE Legal Aid
that provides legal advice to the community. By 6
p.m. that day, Youkhana and Kalasho had opened
their office, working to organize a response to the
crisis.

ALL HANDS ON DECK

Realizing they needed allies in this fight, they
called for reinforcements. Youkhana reached out
to Bonsitu Kitaba, another law school friend who

works at ACLU of Michigan.
“I was at home on June 11 when I got a frantic
call from Nora (Youkhana). She wanted to know
certain aspects of immigration law,” Kitaba recalls.
“Would ICE respect a church as a sanctuary if
immigrants hide there? Would ICE respect the
property of a church and not go inside to arrest
people?
“I asked, ‘What is going on?’ That’s when I
found out that more than 100 Iraqis, mostly from
the Chaldean community, had been arrested.”
Kitaba told Mike Steinberg, legal director of
ACLU of Michigan. Steinberg assessed the situa-
tion, mobilized resources from within the ACLU
and called for additional help from other local
attorneys.