“The goal of these filings is to slow
Miriam Aukerman of the ACLU
down the process so that people
of Michigan, Judy Rabinovitz of the
have time to litigate in immi-
national ACLU Immigrant
ABOVE:
gration courts,” she adds. “If
Rights Project, Margo
Many legal
not for this flurry of intense
Schlanger, professor at
professionals
activity, people might have
the University of Michigan
teamed up to
been sent to Iraq without the
Law School, and Wendolyn
help the Iraqi
chance to dispute the order in
Richard and Kimberly Scott
detainees.
court at all.”
from the law firm of Miller
Canfield joined the effort.
GOING TO COURT
THE DETAINEES
Nationwide, ICE has detained more
than 300 Iraqi nationals, Sunni
and Shia Muslims, Kurds and
Christians since June. Nearly half
were Michigan residents. They were
facing deportation without ever
having an opportunity to show the
immigration courts that they faced
persecution, torture and murder if
returned to Iraq, the country many
had left as small children decades
ago.
ICE intended to deport the detain-
ees to Iraq without giving them the
opportunity to contest their depor-
tation in court. The litigation team
immediately contested the process.
The young attorneys lived this crisis
round the clock, leaving the office
only to go change their clothes and
come right back.
Youkhana’s fiancé, Justin Hanna,
works at the law firm of Jaffe Raitt
Heuer & Weiss. When he told found-
ing partner Ira Jaffe about the situa-
tion, Jaffe asked, “How can I help?”
A GoFundMe.com project was
started to raise funds for detainees
who could not afford to hire immi-
gration attorneys. Jaffe contributed
$10,000.
“For detainees who could not
afford immigration attorneys,
Jaffe filed more than 15 motions
to reopen on an emergency basis
to delay immediate deportations,”
Youkhana says. “We followed up
with requests for a stay of removal.
But the efforts in immigration
court weren’t working; the Detroit
Immigration Court was rejecting
motions to reopen the old immigra-
tion cases, and the threat of depor-
tation without any chance to pres-
ent grew sharper.
In those first frantic days,
Schlanger, Aukerman, Scott and
Rabinovitz led the effort to mobilize
the federal courts on behalf of the
detainees.
Meanwhile, Youkhana and
Kalasho provided a constant flow of
information to detainees, their fami-
lies and the community.
The team went into Federal
District Court and got the emer-
gency order they sought, an immedi-
ate stay of removal from Judge Mark
Goldsmith that applied nationwide
to 1,400 Iraqis with final orders of
removal entered prior to summer
2017.
“The District Court recognized
a right to pause the government’s
efforts to remove the Iraqis so they
could go to immigration court to
contest their orders of removal,”
Schlanger says.
What had changed, after all these
decades, to empower ICE to arrest
all these Iraqi nationals?
Schlanger gives the background:
“Over the years, some Iraqi nation-
als in America have been held to
be removable by American courts.
However, they could not actually
be removed because Iraq declined
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continued on page 16
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April 12 • 2018
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