Good evening everybody. Uh John Don here, Shore View City Council member. I'm just going to do a quick welcome here. Um glad to see everybody on. Um appreciate if you uh would like to turn on your video, that's great, but if you uh would like to stay off camera, understand that as well. Um wanted to first of all on behalf of the city of Shore View, uh welcome you to this immigration, know your rights and family preparation. Um, tonight is about information preparation and ensuring that our families and our community feel supported and empowered. This was one of the things that I was really proud that uh the human rights commission um heard from the community and said this is a topic that uh needs uh attention and uh they took it upon themselves to create this um webinar for tonight. And I'm uh wanted to share that this topic is especially personal to me. I came to United States as a refugee uh from Vietnam at age five. My family arrived here um seeking the proverbial American dream. And like many families, we navigated lots of uncertainty, language barriers, and a system that wasn't always easy to navigate. uh but you know with a lot of help from others, a lot of generosity and hope and also the promise that if we worked hard and we contributed that we would have our chance to live our own American dream. Um I later served as a member as a civil engineer corps officer as a member of the US Navy. Uh wearing the uniform was one of the greatest honors of my life. uh it deep it deepened my belief in service and also the ideals that define our country and I'm proud to also now be a Shoreview city council member through that journey from refugee to service member to an elected official um shapes how I view kind of where we are at uh in our country and in our city and with that in mind knowing our rights is so important preparing our families and our community uh for uh the issues that uh we currently face and going in with as much information as possible is so important. Um, and so with that, I want to introduce um our two speakers, uh, Zoe Martins and Lisa Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Sal Salazar from the South Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, or I think as most people refer to it as Smurls. Uh, Zoe is an immigration outreach coordinator for Smurals. Uh she has worked in support of migrant communities in the Twin Cities as a domestic violence advocate with Espironzi United. Um and then also uh helped people seeking asylum in Mexico at the Mexico Guatemala border uh and in migration policy advocate at the Kino Border Initiative in Sonora, Mexico. She has a master's degree in human rights from University of Minnesota's Humphrey School. And then joining Zoey is Lisa Salazar, who is a supervising attorney in the immigration unit at Smurls. She majored in international relations at Bethl University and studied abroad twice in Mexico to become fluent in Spanish. In 2012, she obtained her JD from William Mitchell College of Law. She practices or she practiced immigration law at a private firm for eight years before joining Smurls in 2020. most of her practice focuses on immigrant victims of domestic violence. And super glad to have both Zoe and Lisa with us. And with that, I'll turn it over to them to uh jump into the uh to meat of this conversation. >> Thank you, Council Member Don. I am going to say a brief introduction as well. >> Alicia, if you're speaking, we're not able to hear you. >> Oh, sure. Okay. We can hear you. >> We can hear you. Go ahead, Alicia. >> Okay. Hi everyone. My name is Alicia Deich. I use she her pronouns and I am co-chair of the Sherby Human Rights Commission. I've had the privilege of serving on this commission for nearly 2 years and I can tell you that our commission is incredibly passionate about the work that we do. We are here tonight um because we know that for many of our neighbors both here in Shore View and across Minnesota, the current landscape of immigration continues to be a source of significant stress, anxiety, and fear. As a commission, we recognize that these aren't just headlines. These are real situations impacting our families, our neighbors, our children, and our schools, and the people who make our community whole. Our goal tonight is to move from fear toward empowerment through knowledge and information. Recently, the city of Shore View released a statement regarding ICE activities in our area, and we want to be clear. Our commitment to being a welcoming and safe community for all residents remains steadfast. Tonight's webinar, Immigration, Know Your Rights, and Family Preparation, is designed to provide you with practical legal tools. We'll be discussing what to do during an interaction with ICE, but just as importantly, we will cover family preparation. This includes vital steps like the delegation of parental authority and power of attorney forms, plans that every family should have in place to ensure children and loved ones are cared for no matter what happens. To guide us through these complex topics, we are honored to be joined by experts from Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, also known as Smurls. Smirs has been providing highquality legal aid to our region since 1909, and they are truly the gold standard for this work. As council member Don mentioned, Zoe Martins is an immigr an immigration outreach coordinator at Smirs. We are also joined by Lisa Salazar, a supervising attorney in the immigration unit at Smirs. We are really grateful to have your expertise with us here tonight. And before I turn it over to Zoe and Lisa, just a few quick notes. We will be together for about 90 minutes. This webinar is being recorded and will be available on the city's website shortly after we conclude tonight for those who couldn't join us live. We will also be sharing information on how to access legal aid and community resources at the end of the presentation. Questions are allowed through the Q&A feature only. This Q&A feature is at the bottom of your screen. This Zoom is set up in webinar format. There is no ability to unmute and speak or raise your hand, but please refer to the Q&A feature to have your questions answered or comments made. We will attempt to answer as many questions as we can during the Q&A period at the end of the webinar. You are more than welcome to send your questions at any time during the program. And we thank you all for being here in community and for caring about your neighbors. And now I'll hand it over to the team from Smurls. >> Wonderful. Thank you so much John and Alysia for the introduction. U my name is Zoe Martins. I am going to work on sharing my screen and I'll have my colleague Lisa briefly introduce herself as well. Hi. Yeah, I'm Lisa and uh we'll be presenting together. Um kind of trying to tag team. Um and I will have I think Zoe kind of just kick us off here if you're ready to go. >> Perfect. >> Yeah. So, as our um colleagues introduce, we're going to be talking about um knowing our rights during this particularly challenging time um as well as steps we can take to prepare prepare ourselves, our families, our community members in case there is an emergency like a detention or deportation. So, I will jump right in um just with a little more info about Smurls. Um, we're just going to go with Smiles because the full name is very long as we heard. Um, so we are a legal aid organization. Um, we provide free civil legal help to lowincome people in the east metro and in southern Minnesota. So, our service area does cover Shore View um, as well as many other areas. Um, and we work in civil law. So, we have many different legal units. Um, some examples are here, um, like our family law unit, our immigration unit that Lisa and I are a part of. Uh, we also work in housing law, education law, many other civil legal areas as well. Um, so that's just a few examples. Um, and we do encourage folks to reach out to us if they have legal questions or a legal problem to see if they're eligible for our services to see if we could provide advice or potentially legal representation if they're eligible. Um, so I've included here our intake phone number that people can call. Um it's available during the weekdays 900 am to 3 pm or people can also go to our website and we have a brief um online form uh folks can fill out to request services and request a call back from us uh to follow up. So those are two ways to get connected to us if people have specific legal issues. So we uh help with a lot of different types of immigration cases. However, there are many kinds of immigration cases and we can't help with all of them. So as you heard, we do cases of domestic violence victims. So that would include the U visa for people who have reported crimes, uh T visa for victims of human trafficking, and VAWA, which is the Violence Against Women Act. And this would be people who are married to a US citizen or otherwise have a US citizen um uh parent or child who's abused them. And then uh we do adjustment of status for refugees as well as um some other types of adjustment of status. So like if somebody gets a U visa, they can come back uh after their 3 years in U visa status and apply for adjustment of status. So that's the green card. Um and then also I751 cases uh when someone has a conditional card will help them with the application to remove the conditions the I751 and then uh renewing or replacing a green card the I90. And for that uh the person just basically needs to be under a certain income level and live within our service area to qualify. And then you know we'll vet for things like criminal issues and make sure that there's not something that's going to disqualify them. from or put them at likelihood of um being placed in removal proceedings like a serious criminal issue that we think is maybe they're better off not renewing. Um otherwise generally we would take the case. Um and then citizenship we do in 400. So anyone who wants to become a citizen again we look at do they live in our service area which includes Ramsey County, Washington County um and then pretty much all of southern Minnesota. um or replacing a na a lost naturalization certificate. Um so uh if someone is already a citizen and they have that naturalization certificate and they've misplaced it if they're income eligible and otherwise eligible then we'll help them to just fill out that application. So there's a lot of things that you know people might be able to do on their own but sometimes there's a language barrier, sometimes there's a technology barrier. Sometimes people just don't feel comfortable and some of these cases can get pretty complicated. And so to have um either an accredited representative or an attorney uh working on the case and having an attorney supervisor and having a team that can kind of work together to solve these more complicated issues can be really helpful to people who need these services and um are under a certain income level and can't maybe afford to hire an attorney. >> Thank you. And I'll add and point out one other thing. We did include on this slide a note um that smiles cannot represent people in their detention or deportation case. Unfortunately um it's due to funding restrictions. Um that's kind of built into the funding that we receive. Um so we just wanted to point that out right away. But throughout the presentation we're going to be talking about other legal aid providers and other community organizations who are able to offer that kind of help. Hope I didn't cut you off, Lisa. >> No, I actually had just noticed that kind of fine print at the bottom and I was about to mention that because that is a pretty key uh key note since that's kind of the big issue right now. We've got people being arrested and detained and that's one of the main things people need help with and unfortunately we're not able to help with that directly but we definitely uh can try to help connect people with those who can and then um we may be able to help somebody further down the road once that initial detention part is taken care of. >> Absolutely. Um I also see if I can switch my slides. Um, I also wanted to share that SMURLs is part of what's called the immigration legal services hub. So, this is like a coalition um of these five organizations. You see, we all provide legal aid. So, we all provide free immigration legal services to low-income people. Um, and we work together to try to increase access to free legal services. Um, so that looks like hosting legal clinics where people can come for advice. Um, trying to do community presentations, um, like this one for example, and overall just trying to increase access to quality information and services. Um, so this coalition also has a website that's linked here or the QR code and people can um go there for more information about upcoming legal clinics um or other services that we are offering um as part of this coalition. And we will probably uh shout out some of these specific organizations in our presentation as well um because some of them do um work that's more directly related to detention and deportation. Okay, so we have a video here. This is Professor Virgil Weebi of St. Thomas. He's an immigration professor there. and uh he came up with this fantastic explanation that I haven't been able to top as far as kind of how immigration law works and why we have these kind of different tiers and why it's not just a apply for citizenship uh situation like you sometimes will see in comments on articles and things like that. >> So now the question will be um if I actually shared my audio. So um I will press play and we will see what happens otherwise I'll fix it. Please, Dad. Can we keep him? >> He's perfect. My bills. Is this coming out of the college savings? >> Quicken, can we do this? >> Nice. Okay, let's take them home. >> Stop guessing and start knowing with QuickC who resources to uh pay for YouTube premium. So, I think you can skip it down. Oh, thank you. Sorry, I can't see what I'm doing. That's fine. Thank you. >> The immigration system is incredibly complex and I try to simplify it for my students by thinking about it as a hotel. You go in through the lobby, you might not even get into the hotel. You not might not be allowed in. You might be allowed to hang out in a in a weird kind of status for years. That was my fault >> in the lobby. And then in hotel rooms, those are non-immigrant visas. There are dozens of these kinds of non-immigrant visas like tourists, like extraordinarily able, tech workers, that kind of thing that are coming for a short period of time presumably. Sometimes that can stretch into a long period of time as people move from different statuses on that floor. Above the hotel room floor is the chapel. The chapel is for people who've been persecuted, who've been tortured, who've been victims of trafficking, victims of crime. It's our humanitarian floor. And then sometimes people can move that from that floor or from the non-immigrant floor, from the hotel room floor up to the floor of apartments. And the apartment floor are legal permanent residents. Those are people who've got green cards. You've heard that term before. That's the green card floor. It's an apartment. And sometimes if you mess up, your landlord can kick you out. And the US government can do that too if you make mistakes. And you can get onto that floor by moving from some of the other floors or by having family members or also based on work or based by chance when you apply for a green card lottery overseas. Moving from that floor up to the top floor is the citizenship floor, the co-op floor. Once you get citizenship, it's very difficult to lose. It can be taken away from you, but it's a much more secure status. You get it by by being born in the United States. You get it by being born to US citizens even though you were born abroad. You get it by naturalizing. That's is moving from the apartment floor up to the US citizenship floor. And then you also get it if you're a child in some circumstances. and your parent becomes a citizen, then you can kind of tag along with them. Below ground in this hotel are the the basement, which is people who have come in without permission and people who've moved from other floors, they've messed up, they've lost their status. And then at the very bottom is the dungeon. That's immigration detention. In some cases, people are required to be detained. If they're like up on the apartment floor, they commit a crime, immigration's trying to deport them, they get put in the dungeon, and they have to fight their way out of that to be able to stay in the United States. So that's the system. There's a lot of movement between floors. You can take an elevator up sometimes. Sometimes you have no right to get on the elevator. And that's the biggest problem with the basement. People who've lived here for decades, who came in illegally, there's not a button they can push to get to the other floors. Okay, thank you for bearing with that bearing with the technology. Um, but it is a really helpful explanation of just context setting of um, you know, for those of us who have not had to navigate the immigration system, just how complicated it is. And one other part of the context setting um that we wanted to show here um is another example of why um gaining immigration status can be so difficult. Um so this relates to if someone is trying to gain immigration status through a family member who is a US citizen or a legal permanent resident. Um and this is a snapshot of something called the visa bulletin. Um, and it's giving us an idea of how long someone might have to wait for their family member to be able to gain immigration status or come to join them in the US. Um, so if we look for example um there's a category called F1 um which is for sons, daughters um of a US citizen who are 21. So they're no longer children um but you know parents still want their uh son or daughter to come join them. Um, for example, if I applied um for my son who is from Mexico, then I can look in the Mexico category and I see a date of December 22nd, 2006. Um, so we could interpret that as the government is currently processing applications in that category that were filed uh in December of 2006. um just as one example of the kinds of wait time and and backlog that people might be facing trying to reunite with their family this way. Lisa, I don't know if you have anything to add or >> um yeah, I was debating I I just a couple things um that was great. Um just on to that a couple notes would be one is um you've got a lot of people that may have already gone through this petition process and so of the you know quote unquote illegals here. You might have people that have been waiting for decades who applied to be legal here and are just waiting because the backlog is so long. So that's factored into um the people that they're talking about that need to be deported. I mean they are literally just waiting for their chance to have this visa come current. Um and uh another thing that I would note too is um this is one of the barriers right is these backlogs to these categories. There's um other categories that you know just don't even exist. For example like a grandparent um might be taking care of their grandchild as a child and they may want to petition for them but that's not allowed. There is no like grandparent visa. There's no uncle aunt visa. So you may have relatives that are US citizens. Um that doesn't mean that they get to petition for you because if it's not in the statute, it doesn't exist. It's not a thing. So there's that issue of kind of, you know, if you don't fall into a category where you can get a visa, you know, say you want to work as a landscaper, you want to come here as a landscaper, but if there's no visa, if nobody's sponsoring you for that, you don't just get to go and apply. Like that doesn't exist. You can't just apply for yourself to come on a work visa. Um, so there might be a job for you here and you might be able to do the work and might be willing to do the work, but you can't get here legally to do that job. So you might look for another way to get here and then, you know, work in this job for decades and decades, but you might not have a way to get there in the first place that, you know, would be a lawful pathway. Um, and then the third thing that I was just going to mention is that there's a lot of different kind of barriers and bars. So with this visa bulletin, you might have a category that works and you might have that petitioner and they petition for you and everything is great. But if you've been here or you are here and you violated uh some immigration regulation, you may not qualify even though you have you know waited the 20 years. if you are in a certain category and you worked without authorization or if you were previously deported or something like that and maybe that even though you've waited your whole time when you finally get there and there's a visa available, they're going to deny it because you broke some rule along the way and you no longer qualify. So, there's a lot of of nuances and a lot of complications and those things all kind of stand in the way a lot of times of people being able to get status. >> Thank you for those additions. Okay. So, um what is up in the corner here is uh it's part of a red card and I think most people know what those are at this point. Um I think the immigrant legal resource center started putting them out and you can order them and they can come in boxes. You can also print them out and they've been passed around quite a bit especially in the last couple months. Um and we started giving them out at the beginning of last year when we did these kinds of presentations. Um initially we had a lot of hope about their usability. We would give them out in different languages and say okay you know memorize this information read it familiarize with yourself with it. You can always show this card to somebody who's asking you questions you know let them know like these are my rights. I know my rights. I'm exercising my rights. Um, unfortunately, especially kind of in this last thing that we've been through, Metro Surge, we've seen that uh the the cards really don't help like we thought they would. Um, and the rights that we believe we have have not been um respected in the way that we expected to see them. So, I still think that the red cards are useful and I still think that people need to know and understand and exercise their rights, but I think that also we have to be practical and understand that um the rights that you have may not be expected. And so, it's good to have kind of a plan B. We know that we shouldn't open the door, right? We also know that in some cases ICE has broken down the door even for people who didn't open the door when there wasn't a judicial warrant. Now obviously that's being litigated. So hopefully that's not going to continue happening, but now we know that there was a directive that you know in these situations go ahead and break down the door. We didn't know that until after it had started happening. Um not answering questions. We've seen that that will result in people you know getting hauled off to Whipple. So, um, you know, it's really difficult. You get in an impossible situation if you leave your house a lot of the time. Um, and so a lot of times their advice has shifted, especially for, you know, people who maybe speak with an accent or, um, is a person of color, you might want to just start answering their questions. you might start to show them your documents right off the bat because any kind of resistance might be um not looked at as exercising your rights, but rather as, you know, being uncooperative and and um if you have any kind of um personal objection to being taken to jail, you might want to think about saying, you know what, I'm I'm just going to go with it. And that's it's unfortunate that that's the situation, but that's the situation. So, like I said, we have to be practical. Maybe you're a person that has little kids at home and you just you don't want to deal with that and you're just going to want to be as cooperative as possible and think about your own safety in that in that moment. Um not signing anything without speaking to a lawyer that absolutely stands. And the reason that I think that's more important than ever is um one thing that we've been seeing is people are taken to Texas within a very short time after um being taken into custody and they're being handed these documents that are going to get them deported and they're being told, you know, you don't get access to a lawyer and you don't have any rights and you're not going to get status, therefore sign this because unless you want to spend the rest of your life in this miserable detention camp, you're going to want to sign here and then at least you'll get, you set free in your home country. And so people are signing this because they don't know that they have an attorney that's fighting for them because they haven't had access to a phone and they don't know that maybe they have ability to get out and to fight for their status. So, it's really important that everyone's aware of this before that situation happens where they might be in detention so that when they're told you have to sign this form, they know that this is a trick and that they don't have to sign that unless they really have, you know, studied their options and they know that they don't have another way and they do really want to just move that forward. A lot of times families are trying to get them out and then they find out that they've signed this form and then it just adds another hurdle to trying to get them released. Um, so we have um we're talking about uh rights and we're talking about family preparation and you know rights like I said um we have constitutional rights and those apply to everybody um but they aren't necessarily respected for anybody um and then we have family preparation steps which can um just mean practical things that people can do to prepare for possible detention for possible deportation of a family member. Um, and so we have kind of plan A and plan B, I guess you could say here. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the family preparation, just things that people can do kind of in advance of an emergency. Um, and this has been a topic we're talking a lot about with our clients, um, and other community members who might be especially vulnerable to detention. Um, so people who are undocumented or have a pending petition or I mean also many other people as as Lisa mentioned. Um, so some of the practical advice we're giving to folks is um to make a plan in advance, right? Um, so these are difficult conversations but conversations that are important to have with your family or household members um if you think you might be vulnerable to a detention. Um so one concrete step would be kind of finding a trusted person who will be that person um on the outside you know not in the Whipple building who would be able to help you if you were detained. Um so practical steps would be to make sure you have that person's phone number memorized um because if someone is detained um their cell phone will be taken away and you you know you won't be able to look up contacts in your phone. So, making sure you know you have this trusted person's phone number memorized. That's going to be the first person you call if there is an emergency. Um, and we also want to make sure in advance that trusted person has the information that they would need to try to help you in case of a detention. Um, so things like wanting, you know, all of your documents organized in one place and this person knows how to access them. Maybe you have a pending immigration application. Well, that person should know that and should be able to get that information in case of your detention. Um, so it's kind of those practical steps beforehand um of planning for the wor the worst case scenario um and making sure that trusted person would be able to access those essential pieces of information for you. So that's one, you know, practical step that we're we're sharing with folks. Lisa, if you want to take these, these are some other steps we're sharing. >> Yeah. So, um, one of the documents that you would want to have in that kind of packet for that person is the DOPA. And it's probably, you know, in a lot of cases going to be the same person, the person that you delegate care of your children to. It could be a relative. It could be a neighbor. Um, ideally somebody with a more secure status so that they're not at risk of also getting picked up. Um, but literally it can be anybody. Um, it doesn't have to be somebody local, but it's probably better if it is so that it's somebody that, you know, if you need somebody to zip over and get your kids or pick them up from school, they're able to do that. Um, so, uh, we there have been a lot of events and clinics um, helping people to sign up for these. Um, it got a little bit more complicated once a lot of people started sheltering in place if they didn't already have this because it does need to be notorized, but there are a lot of notaries who are willing to go to people's houses. So, it can still be done. Um, it does expire after a year and um, it's going to um, need to be kind of just redone and that's, you know, regardless. I think you can make it for less time than that, but you can't make it for longer than that. So, at at the year mark, you need to re-evaluate and say, "Okay, do we still want it to be this person? Is this person still willing to be my delegate for my kids and um and then just make sure that you do a new one so that you it's still going to be valid." Um, and this is not, you know, like giving up custody of your kids or something like that. It's just a temporary limited scope um delegation so that they can take the kids to the doctor, they can um sign them up for sports, they can pick them up from school, things like that. um just the day-to-day uh getting the kids around and having a a basic permission to do that if the parents are unavailable. Um and then having a plan about family reunification. So next step is you know what if the parents are deported? Um just talking about okay what are what's going to happen with the kids? Are they going to stay in the United States? Are they going to stay in the United States forever? Are they going to stay until the end of the school year? Are they gonna leave immediately with the parents and just go back to the home country? A lot of factors into this. You know, are they citizens or not? Are they um how old are they? You know, if they're not in school yet, it's probably going to make sense for them to travel with the parents. But if they're older and already pretty entrenched in, you know, their studies here and things like that, you know, maybe we want them to at least finish out the year. So, just talking about these things, talking with the kids, making these plans, having that figured out. um you know maybe they have friends that they can stay with. Just thinking through these practical things of how is our life going to look if it comes to this point because as uncomfortable as those conversations are to have now they're so much more uncomfortable when you only have you know a 10-minute phone call maybe once a day and um there's a lot of other things that are going on and a lot of high emotions. Um so part of that is making sure the kids have valid passports. You want to do that regardless, even if they're not going to travel uh with you to be permanently relocated. Um you do want them to be able to come and visit you. And it's just a lot more complicated to get passports when the parents are not available for minors. So, it's something that the parents um really want to take care of right off the bat. Um and then making a plan about property and finances and um you might need a power of attorney. Um those are forms that you can find easily online. Um, empower opportunity can be um kind of doctorred to include whatever you need it to. Um, you know, if you want to uh talk about your personal property, if you want to talk about a lease that you have. Um, and uh, Zoe, do you have something about the guide in here? That villain's guide. Okay. Yeah. So, um that'll get like into way more detail on those things, but just generally, um if you are going to be leaving forever or for a very long time, there's a lot of things that you might want to deal with here to make sure that you're actually going to get money for, you know, if you have a house to sell and things like that. Um and also just to not completely ruin your credit. If you think, you know, maybe I want to come back someday, you want to not burn all of those bridges. um or for your kids to you know there's a lot of things that you might want to make sure are taken care of and again so much easier if you kind of make a plan for that and have that stuff documented in advance. >> Yeah, that's a great overview. We'll just share a few more detailed points on kind of these practical recommendations. Um so we had talked about you know having that trusted person who can help you in case of emergency. Um this slide just shows some more specific resources. So, um, there is a form that's on lawminnesota.com. We'll be sharing that that website, but this is a QR code as well, and it's just a a simple form for someone to fill out um with, you know, some of these types of information like your full name, date of birth, if you have a pending immigration application, just things to fill out in advance so that that trusted person would be able to better help you. Um, so that's another practical step people can take. Um, we're also, you know, making sure people have access to this website, which is a detainee locator. Um, this is one way to attempt to find someone who may have been detained. Um, it's an online lookup. It's imperfect. Um, you know, it can take a day or two maybe to update the system. Um, so we, you know, it might not be, um, as efficient to find someone right away, but it's, you know, a way to try to locate folks who might have been impacted by detention. So, these are all resources that, um, you know, folks could share with their trusted person before, um, there is an emergency. Um, and I'll just run through these kind of briefly because Lisa touched on them. Um, but this is some of the topline items about what the DOA is like we mentioned. Um, so Lisa, you know, already kind of talked us through that this is not a custody order or anything like that. It's just temporary permission to make decisions um about your children like school doctor and to give them that day-to-day care. Um, so you don't need to go to court for it. It's really a two-page document um that the parent or parents would fill out. Um, the parent does need to sign in front of the notary like Lisa said. Um but the temporary caregiver that you're delegating can sign after their signature does not have to be notorized. Um so that's just a thing to know. Um ideally the the caregiver would have know a fairly stable immigration status and they absolutely should be a trusted person. Um someone who's you know willing to care for your children and um someone you trust. Um and then Lisa also pointed out that it's good for a year. Um, so it can certainly be, you know, filled out again if it's about to expire. Um, and we will share with folks where, uh, you can find the DOPA form online. You can print it out. Um, it comes in a variety of languages as well to help people be able to do this themselves with the help of just the notary. Um, and then similar just a few quick notes on the power of attorney. That's a separate form. Um, so you know, while the DOPA is very specific to caring for children, the power of attorney can cover more things like we brought up, like, you know, if I own a house, um, or have a rental property and I think I might need someone to help me with that if I'm not in the country, um, it's giving this other trusted person permission to, uh, take action in your name. So, it's a very similar way that you fill it out like the DOPA. um you do also need to sign it in front of a notary. Um and then the person who's the attorney in fact can sign after. So it doesn't mean they have to be an attorney. Folks sometimes get confused about that term. That's just what the p it's called the person you're delegating this power to. So someone trusted, but it could be you know your best friend or your brother. Um any of those people could be the attorney in fact who will be taking action in your name. Um, and it's a form that lets you choose what powers you want to give this person. Um, so like the power to do bank transactions for you or to um, you know, do something with your real estate. You can kind of check off um, what you do and and don't want this person to be able to do. And then one last thing I'll point out, um, we have gotten a lot of questions about, um, how could someone's children travel internationally if they are already out of the country? Um, and it's a really difficult question that I don't think we have uh 100% answer to. Um, but one idea we had would be to kind of add on to the power of of attorney a specific power if you want, for example, your best friend or your brother to be able to travel internationally with your kids and bring them to reunite with you in your home country, for example. Um, it's something that you could write into the power of attorney. um because the DOPA is only valid in Minnesota. So that's not going to do you much good um to have someone attempt to travel with your children. So that's just another note there because we've gotten u that question from people. Um and then lastly, I'll hand it back to you, Lisa. I just wanted to zoom through this part because you gave us a good overview. Um this is uh a website lawmn.org. um they just created this nice little shortcut. So if you do slashimmigration, it will bring you to the immigration related um explainers. So they have like really brief, easy to understand explainers about different topics. Um for example, they have one about the DOPA and one about the power of attorney. So, it kind of walks you through what it means and then it also at the end has the actual form that you can then print out and um use and get notorized. So, those um are two resources on that website and there's also many more that people can find. Yeah, I really suggest just kind of browsing through this website. There's so many resources and they have like Zoe said the explainers and they have actual forms that you can download and they have information in many different languages. And this is a Minnesota site. So they um specifically transl they worked on translating languages into kind of uh languages that are specific to Minnesota's populations. So obviously things are in Spanish, they're also in Mong, they're also in Somali. So um it's not like you go on Dualingo and it's like French. No, like what are our populations here? What do people need? And they have um for the most part the languages that you would want to see. Um, so if you work with um immigrant populations and you think like, okay, this is the question that people get me, it's it might be worth like printing off some of these and and having like if you're in education or something like that. Um, some of this information is just really useful and helpful and um absolutely free and it's been vetted by, you know, all of the attorneys. Like I've helped with some of these coming up with these um things to make sure that all of the information in there is correct and then they go over it and make sure that it's understandable. So, just a really fantastic legal resource that we have here for um legal self-help. So, maybe you can't get through to a nonprofit. Maybe they're not answering the phone or they don't have capacity for your case, but you might be able to find something here that you can go ahead and get started on. >> Yes, great shout out for law.com, I mean.org. Um and then one other concrete resource we wanted to share with folks um about these family preparation steps um volunteer lawyers network is another great legal aid organization that we work with um and they have capacity to specifically give advice about these issues. So if someone has more specific questions about the delegation of parental authority or about the power of attorney or questions about you know how could I what should I do now if I want to sell my car um but I end up in my home country. I mean those kinds of kind of concrete preparation questions. Um volunteer lawyers network has lawyers who are ready to give advice on on those questions and talk through them. Um so their phone number is up here. people can reach out to them. Um, or they also have an online intake to kind of sign up for a time to get advice on these issues. Um, so that's also a really good resource because these are questions related to immigration, but it's not immigration law. Like it's questions about how do I sell my house and things like that. So VLN is ready to answer those questions. Now we want to shift a bit um just into reviewing you know what our rights are um with the caveat that Lisa has already given that you know we know that the rights we have aren't necessarily being respected um but we want to just review um some of these rights are important to know and then get into a few more specific resources um about you know in case there is a detention what legal aid organizations are doing that kind of work. Um so this is just you know kind of the top topline recommendations um that we would have both about steps to take in case of an encounter and the rights that we do have under the constitution. Um so you know the first one being more of a recommendation to try your best to stay calm in this u situation. Um the second being our fifth amendment right the right to remain silent. Um, you know, Lisa was talking through there are probably pros and cons in different situations. Um, but if anybody, if any law enforcement officer or anyone else asked me questions, uh, I have the right to remain silent and I can tell them that I'm choosing to remain silent. Um, so it's something that might be on a case- by case basis kind of what's the best, you know, approach, but we do all have that fifth amendment right. Um, we also have the right to our private space. Um, which is something Lisa also talked about. Um, that if someone is knocking on my door, I don't have to answer my door, right? That's my private space. Um, the exception would be if I'm presented with a signed judicial warrant that a judge, you know, authorized that law enforcement can come into my home. Um, and so I don't know how often ICE has signed judicial warrants. I don't think very often. Um, they usually have what's called an administrative warrant. So it's not signed by a judge. It's signed by an ICE agent. Like I've heard sometimes they have like a stack of them and then they can just sign them as they go. So it doesn't, you know, mean the same thing as a signed judicial warrant. Um but in practice we're seeing that um this right is not necessarily being respected. So that's where the challenge is the rights in theory versus the rights in practice. >> Um >> can I um just jump in on that too? Um, and for years I heard, you know, we used to give, back in my old firm, we used to give these kinds of presentations and we'd talk about administrative warrants versus judicial warrants. And I didn't really know kind of how to explain that cuz I mean, honestly, who knows what an administrative warrant is? And who knows what a judicial warrant is? Like those are long, complicated, legalistic wars. But um, ultimately like an administrative warrant is not a warrant at all. It's just an ICE document. It's an ICE piece of paper. And then a judicial warrant is from a judge from a federal court. So if you um and you can look this up, I um have seen these where you have like a side by side like this is an administrative warrant. This is a judicial warrant and they look very different. like the judicial warn is going to say like you know uh fourth judicial district at the top big letters fancy kind of um decorativeish um headings right the administrative war doesn't have headings you know it's there isn't anything fancy that's doing it's just an ICE document so um if you have looked at both of these you're going to know right off the bat but like Zoe said they never have judicial warrants so um it doesn't ultimately really matter if they did they'd probably make a big deal out of it. Um, and we haven't we just haven't seen that. They have to actually go to a federal court and get a federal judge to sign off on this. So, the level that someone would have to be for a federal judge to be willing to say, "Yes, you can go break into this person's home." Um, you know, because they've actually tried to get the person to go to court and they're refusing and everything else. I mean, we just don't see it get to that level. Um, so, uh, in in practicality, you're just not going to see those judicial warrants. Um and if and if you did then you would know I think but um if they come with a paper you know it's not going to be that and so they typically don't even bother to try to show it because it doesn't give them rights to do really anything. >> Yeah thank you for those additions. Um the you know the other things we would definitely point out which Lisa did um fifth amendment right as well to not sign any legal documents right I don't need to sign a document if I don't fully understand it um and I don't want to sign something without knowing what it is if I'm signing my deportation but I actually maybe do have some sort of relief or protection available to me. Um, so we've definitely heard that of, you know, officers pressuring people into signing things or saying a paper is something that it's not. Um, so we definitely want to be really careful about signing things. Um, another piece of practical advice is, you know, if people have false documents, um, that, you know, we don't want to, um, we don't advise using those. Um, that would obviously be a fraud situation. Um, and speaking with an attorney, right? So that's related to the um not signing anything. Ideally, an immigration attorney would be able to explain the document to you, explain if you do have other relief options. Um and you know, ICE is not your lawyer. They may try to give you legal advice, but they're they're not your lawyer. So, the best would be to speak with an immigration attorney and fully understand um your situation. >> And I do want to amend what I said earlier. I said they're not going to respect a lot of these rights and so it might not do you a whole lot of good to say oh I'm exercising my right to remain silent or I am you know not going to open my door knowing that um in some cases they've broken it down but at the same time you absolutely should be exercising your rights because even if they disregard your right to remain in your home um and you know not go barging in without a warrant even if they don't allow allow you to speak to an attorney, you still need to ask to si speak to an attorney. You say, "I want to speak to my attorney. I want to call my attorney." Why? Because later on when you were suing the federal government, you could say, "I told them that I had an attorney and I wanted to speak with them and they said no." And those things are going to matter at some point. I believe that. And um so we're doing habius petitions. We're seeing federal judges ruling on these things saying you have to bring them back to Minnesota. You have to give them back their things. Um, but the more you can show like I told them that I had a green card or I told them I was a US citizen. Um, and especially like if somebody's there filming that and they've got proof that you said I am a US citizen and they took you anyway. Um, then that's going to come back to help you and to hurt them. So, um, it's really important to keep exercising your rights even if it seems like it's not mattering in the moment because there may be a point where it is going to matter. So, um, try to just cling to that that you know that you are doing the right thing even if it doesn't seem to be working or helping at this moment that you know what your rights are and you're going to keep exercising them because we still have faith that um, it is going to matter some point down the road. >> Absolutely. >> Lisa, do you want to walk us through this one? This is just a few more. >> Sure. Um, so everyone carry a Minnesota license or state ID. Um, we've been recommending that since the beginning because state IDs now are available to anyone. You can't get an enhanced ID if you don't have a certain status, but you can get a regular state ID or driver's license if you can meet those qualifications. And the reason that we recommend that is that the state ID, if you say don't have any status and you go get a state ID, um, you can show that as proof of your identity and it doesn't necessarily identify you as somebody that wasn't born here. It doesn't say where you were born. If you pull out a Mexican passport and that's what you use for your identification document, you're advertising that you are a citizen of a foreign country. Um, and then same with like the consular ID or any other type of document that, you know, shouts to whoever might be asking, I am a foreigner here. I'm an immigrant. Um, so if you're in a place that you know that might matter, um, dealing with a federal authority, whatever, um, you're going to want to prefer to have that. If you're a US citizen, you may choose to carry your passport. Um, some people are recommending passport cards because they're cheaper, they're smaller, they fit in your wallet. Um, so if you're somebody that says, you know, I don't feel comfortable leaving the house without my passport cuz, you know, because of the way I look, I'm going to be targeted. Um, that might be a really good option. and you might think about getting a passport card and then you can just stick it in your wallet. You don't have to worry about, you know, losing your passport cuz it's bulky. It's going to fall out and instead of reaching for your driver's license, you can just reach for that. I'm a US citizen. You have got, you know, just about irrefutable um proof there. Naturalization certificate is a little bit more complicated to carry around. um, US birth certificate. I mean, I don't really recommend people carry around a a birth certificate, especially um, the original um, I mean that you you're curing one problem with having another problem. So, what if somebody, you know, if that falls out of your purse, somebody else could find that and you're opening yourself up to identity fraud because you just given that person all of this information. So, um, if you're really at risk, you're really concerned about it, you want to make sure that, you know, say if you leave your home and you leave your kids with a babysitter that you want to be able to show like, I have these children, like you need to reunite with these children right away. Maybe having a copy of their birth certificate on you is a good idea. Just be mindful of how you're carrying these documents so that you're not going to cause more problems than you're solving. Um, so think about kind of what's practical and um, maybe you want to take a copy with you but have the original at home. If you're naturalized, I don't really see the benefit to carrying a naturalization certificate. I think you're better off with a passport card. Um, but, you know, if you are applied for one and you haven't gotten it and you just really want proof of um, your citizenship, you maybe you take that in the meantime. Um, now for permanent residence, it's non-negotiable. You must carry your physical green card with you. That's not a copy, not a picture of it. You should make a copy and have a copy at home in case you lose it so you can get a new one more quickly and still have that proof. But this is the law. You're going to get in trouble if you don't have that. And I keep emphasizing this cuz I think a lot of people didn't know this. And then the government said recently like you have to have this. Like they're basically we are going to start enforcing this. You're going to get in trouble. So, if you are a permanent resident and you have lost your card, it's very important to get on that and apply. It's going to take a while for them to produce a new card for you. And so, you want to just minimize that time as much as possible. Um, anyone that's not a citizen or permanent resident um is what we've seen is they're just more at risk of being detained and kind of detained first, ask questions later. So, um, just kind of be mindful of that that having your documents with you is not necessarily going to prevent ICE from detaining you. Um, however, it's still important to have those documents with you in case you are questioned so you are able to show them. So, if you've got um an I94, if you're a refugee, you're going to want to make sure that you have that with you. If you have work authorization, um, you know, that's something. It shows some kind of status. So, it's some kind of an application. So, it's better than nothing. Um, and again, as I said, you don't want to carry a foreign ID with you, um, unless you have absolutely no other option, and that shouldn't be the case here in Minnesota. Um, with the work permit, it it will show what category you're in, and that may be helpful, or it may not be helpful. um it's probably not going to make you any worse off. But if you have like work authorization based on um some kind of a status or quasi status, it might be better to have that document and to put the emphasis on that. I'm thinking for example of a U visa, if you have a bonafide determination letter, it's going to be better to show that and say, look, I got this deferred action versus the card that is, you know, based off of that, but it doesn't really say that same thing. So, if you have some kind of process, you have an attorney, talk to your attorney about, you know, what is the best thing for me to be carrying, the best um strongest proof that I have that I shouldn't be taken into detention. And like I said, it doesn't guarantee anything, but you want to mitigate as much as you possibly can. Um, and then like Zoe said earlier, you know, you don't want to show any false documents. You don't want to give a false name. These are just going to get you into more um problems than you're already in. So, don't do that. the penalties for fraud are very very significant. >> Yep. Thank you. Um I am just going to review a few other things that I'm hoping we can talk a little bit more about detention resources and get time for questions. Um so this is just another kind of practical slide of like key phrases to practice if um you know you were to be in an interaction with federal agents. um they are helpful but at the same time you know as we've been saying um um rights are not necessarily going to be respected. So um I think practicing them kind of in advance could be helpful you know if you are in a a tense and high pressure situation um to try to remember that you know we can say I do want to speak to an attorney um or I'm using my right to remain silent. So, kind of preparing yourself beforehand um that those are rights that you can use in those situations. Um, and the last resource, um, as far as know your rights, if people, um, have not already seen these videos, um, definitely recommend watching these, um, these we have rights videos, and they just show examples of, um, potential ways people might come into contact with ICE, like if they're knocking at my door, if they come up to me on the street, um, and show the ways that, you know, in an ideal world world, we can exercise our rights. um to remain silent, to not open our doors when there's no warrant. Um so they also are in a variety of languages um and are helpful resources. Um so that's another thing to um use to educate yourself or or share with folks in the community. And then I want to see if Lisa could talk us through just a little bit about kind of, you know, what we've been seeing with detention recently. Um if you've been hearing about attorneys filing the habius corpus um we just wanted to talk briefly about this topic. >> Yeah, this is um you might have heard that this is kind of a big deal. It's really blown up and uh we've seen federal attorneys leaving the the office of the um Minnesota attorney because of um these cases and this just crazy explosion of habius cases. The reason that this is happening is that the federal government had severely restricted access to bond hearings. Um, for the entire time that I've been in practice, if somebody is arrested by ICE and taken into detention, they can request a bond hearing and they're going to get it. And it might be the next day or it might be, you know, in a week depending on the judge's calendar and things like that. but they have um the ability to go before an immigration judge and show why they should be released. And the judge is supposed to look at are they a flight risk? Um you know, do they have anything that they can apply for? Are they likely to keep going with this? You know, are they a danger to the community? Have they committed any crime? So, you show this stuff and if it looks okay, they'll give the person a bond and it might be high. It might be $10,000. It might be $15,000, but they say if you pay this amount of money, you are free to go. You have to come back to your hearings. You are going to have to comply with everything if you want to get the money back. But you have this ability to do that. So people aren't just stuck in jail the whole time their case is pending unless they do have like a really serious criminal issue. Um but what happened is um one of the big issues is that the government said, "Well, we we've been looking at this the wrong way. Actually, if you came in without a visa, that means you're an arriving alien. Even if you've been here for 20 years, you fall into this category, not this category. And so, you don't even get the right to a bond hearing. Um, and so that means everyone just sits in jail until the judge decides whether or not they're going to be deported. And that has a lot of consequences. One is we run out of bed space in Minnesota and have to start sending people out of state. Another is um and I've seen this personally when people are sitting in jail um their ability to want to fight goes down very quickly where they say you know I know that I have a good case. I know that you know if I can just go in front of the judge and explain my asylum case or whatever it is um you know that the judge is going to believe me and that I'm going to win and I'm going to be released after all. They're like I don't want to fight anymore. You know this is just too I just want to be released. I just want to be free. I just I don't even care if they send me back to the country that I think I'm going to be killed in. I can't take another day of this detention. And so it just wears people down. And that's kind of the goal, I think, is that if they can keep people detained, if they can just get people to be compliant and say, "Fine, I'll sign your form. I just just get me out of here." Um I mean, people are going to regret that later on, but in the moment, that's all they can think about is just getting out of where they are right now. Um so um havius corpus is the ability to challenge detention to produce the body. Why is this person detained? Why do they need to be detained? We didn't hardly ever use it before as immigration practitioners because it just wasn't necessary. But now we're saying, okay, the law says this person gets to at least have a bond hearing and we don't believe the government is applying that law and so therefore we're going to a federal judge and saying we don't believe they have the right to detain this person and they need to explain that. And so the government isn't having to argue why they need this person to be detained. And in most cases, at least here in Minnesota, the federal judges are siding with the immigrants and against the government and saying, "Yeah, the person like you don't have the reason to keep, you know, at least give them a bond hearing." In some cases, in a lot of cases, no, they're just ordering immediate release of the person. Um, they're ordering for them to be brought back if they've been sent out of the out of the state. Um, sometimes they've they're ordering for them to be brought back if they've been sent out of the country even if the deportation was unlawful, and that has happened. Um so this is another branch of the government that is saying you know we got to stick to the laws that we have and we have to interpret them correctly and this is kind of the checks and balances we have. So it's it's a crazy uh kind of twist that things have taken that now a lot of attorneys who were not even licensed in federal court are becoming licensed in federal court because this has become such a big need. Um, unfortunately you have to be licensed in the jurisdiction that you are um that you know that the person is in. So if somebody's in Minnesota still um you can file it in Minnesota but they've already been transferred out say to Texas um and at the point that you get involved that they're already there. Uh then you're going to need a Texas attorney to file that. It's going to need to be somebody who's licensed there. And um the wait to get licensed in uh Texas is a little bit longer. So, you know, I think it's like 6 months or something like that. So, you're not going to be able to just go and apply for um to uh to be able to be in the Texas federal bar, you're going to need to find somebody who's already licensed there who who you can partner with. And so, that's another thing that people have been doing is, you know, making those connections. Okay, who's licensed here? We've had a lot of um litigators who don't necessarily know really anything about immigration, but who say, you know, I know federal litigation. I I can do a habius petition. um just explain to me the immigration part of it and I will file this for you. So there's been a lot of cooperation um amongst you know different attorneys in different organizations and you know attorneys in different states to be able to get these done and there's been a lot of cooperation among the nonprofits. So, this is one of the things that we um as SMLS can't do because of the funding sources we receive, but we can um help people connect to other organizations that are taking these on and to like groups of proono attorneys, like maybe they're um you know, attorneys in a big firm who are joining together to do these types of applications. So, we can help get people connected to that. But one thing that we want to just really um emphasize is that it needs to happen quickly, especially, you know, if they're just taken in, we want to get them connected to that person and get that habius in right away before they're transferred out because then that can prevent them um being transferred out or make them bring them back if they transfer them out and they shouldn't. Um but it's just it's going to be a much better situation if we can get it filed while they're still here in Minnesota. And that can be very quick like even in a matter of hours. So it's really really important to act quickly. So, it's important that people know that if somebody's detained and they are um maybe not a citizen, if they're citizen, it's kind of a different situation. But for an immigrant who's detained, this is going to be really key um to make sure that uh this is filed before things get worse than they already are. >> Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back to the, you know, preparation steps that we were talking about as well. like, you know, if that trusted person already has all the info they would need to call a lawyer on my behalf, then these things could happen more quickly. Um, so that's kind of why we we recommend those kinds of steps. Um, so a few resources here um to um let folks know and share people um these are some of the resources um related to detention specifically. So, Immigrant Law Center is another one of our um partner organizations in the hub. Um, and they have a phone line that's specific to providing orientation um and information resources um if someone is detained. Um so, they've actually expanded their hours. It's still not, you know, all the time. It's Monday through Thursday 1 to 3. Um but they've seriously expanded their hours given um this, you know, the uptick we've been seeing of detentions. um and they're able to orient people. Um someone who's detained can call or you know a family member, a friend can call on their behalf. So it's a really good connection point to just kind of get oriented and figure out what next steps can be. Um it doesn't necessarily mean the immigrant law center is going to be representing the person on their case, but they're going to give the orientation um and help people know what the next steps are. Um so that's a really good resource. um care Minnesota as well. Um the Council on American Islamic Relations um also operates a detention type line. Uh they have a 24hour um access and it's text and call. Um so that's another resource that's just good to have on hand to kind of have a you know place to reach out to and get that immediate orientation. Um and then there's also some these are like lists that are now publicly available. um immigrant loss interest compiled like a big um kind of resource list um and these are some places to reach out to if someone is in a situation um where they're detained and would be pursuing habius corpus um so there's definitely private attorneys who are taking on these cases um and there's also um different kind of grassroots projects um coming up to try to give free services um for habius corpus so you know it's going to depend on their capacity Um but this group um has a Google form where um you know friends and family members can request help um for someone that's detained and needs you know that habius petition filed quickly. Um so these are a few places and resources to kind of turn to right away um as Lisa said since time is of the essence. Um so those are some important resources and I have one other um one on the next slide. Um this is um in a situation if someone is granted bond um this organization, the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund, um you can look up their website or their QR code. Um but they give financial support um to pay bonds. So again, it's going to depend on their current capacity, you know, what they're able to help with, but folks can also request um that financial help. Um you know, if there is a really high bond set and maybe family doesn't have the ability to cover that, uh this is another resource uh to try to get that kind of support. And then um one other resource I wanted to throw out here. We've been talking a lot about you know the the most vulnerable populations maybe people who entered without inspection. They're maybe they're undocumented. Um those folks have absolutely been impacted by what we're seeing in Minnesota. But we know that um people who are legal permanent residents and US citizens have also been impacted and in many cases have been detained, taken to the Whipple building for example. Um so these are just some recommendations more for those situations. Um for people who are US citizens, one resource would be the National Lawyers Guild. Um they do have a hotline and um are doing their best to go to um see every US citizen who has been detained at Whipple. Um I think largely we are seeing that US citizens are processed differently than other folks and are usually released the same day. Um maybe the following day. Um but obviously a very very concerning trend to say the least. Um so National Lawyers Guild would be one resource for folks. Um, and then people who are legal permanent residents, um, a few different recommendations, um, would be to also call the the same National Lawyers Guild hotline, see if they have, um, the ability to visit, uh, those people and work on getting them out. Um, and folks could also fill out the habius project intake form that we talked about if, um, habius does become necessary. Um, but those would be some resources that we'd recommend for those situations. Um and then for these situations or many others as well, you know, ACLU Minnesota has been leading litigation on many issues. Um and they continue to collect testimonies and experiences um of people who are US citizens and legal permanent residents detained um protesters who are detained, people who were detained after being racially profiled. Uh there's a lot of things that they're tracking and and using in their litigation. So, we also encourage people who are able to and want to um to report those instances to ACLU to help with their litigation. So, that's another um resource that we've included on this slide. Okay. And I think we did it. Lisa, do you have anything else to to add before we open it up to questions? >> Uh you're still muted. >> Uh sorry. I think uh we can go into questions um and kind of pick up anything we missed that way. >> Sounds good. I'm just going to stop sharing and we will see what questions we have. >> I can share the first question. Um are you giving this presentation in any other nearby cities? >> Good question. I mean we don't necessarily have anything planned right now. Um, but I mean that's part of the work that we're trying to do is if community organizations or cities reach out to us, we will try our best to fulfill the request and and share this information. >> Well, we've done a lot of presentations, a lot of these kind of know your rights um presentations, but we also kind of tailor them to the group that's requesting. So um we have different groups asking for um speaking on immigration and it might be a group that's saying we need this for our immigrant population to understand what their rights are. Or it might be a group saying you know we have people that are in um education and they want to know kind of what their role is as people who are dealing with these vulnerable kids and their families. So um yeah I think we we don't have a specific set like this is our presentation that we do. I mean we talked about okay what is it that they're looking for who is their audience and let's try to meet what they're asking for. So um if you want somebody to come we also um kind of share a little bit with uh other our other partners in the hub. So um we tend to try to stay in our lane and stay in our our side of the cities. Um so other organizations might be um doing similar type talks in say Minneapolis or um uh the west metro area or up you know farther north whereas we're more likely to go down south to Rochester or Austin and places like that. Thank you so much Lisa. Um it looks like this was partially answered in the chat but someone was wondering about the process of seeking legal process after an unlawful detention. you'd refer them to the resources that you spoke about. Correct. I know that that's one of the I think one of the bigger things where people are are aware that folks are being unlawfully detained. >> Yeah, I I think that um I I I could answer better if I um made sure that I understand kind of what the question is about. But if we're talking about like a US citizen, um, like the, you know, Sue Tisher case where it's somebody who, um, you know, we don't really think they should be detained by ICE at all, right? They're not an immigrant. They're not somebody who is deportable. Um, then we would say, yeah, call the National Lawyers Guild or call, you know, the ACLU to report kind of like violations of rights. Um, if it's somebody where like maybe there's a they're a citizen but there's a a question about that or you know they're a permanent resident say they don't have their card on them or something like that. Um, that that might not be a situation where you'd go to the National Lawyers Guild because it's not, you know, because they were protesting or of their activism. It was because of say how they look. You might still want an immigration attorney to get on that. Not because they necessarily need an immigration attorney work, but just because they kind of know the channels and okay, so what does this person need? They need someone to get their green card to them at Whipple. Okay, so let's facilitate that. Maybe they don't even need an attorney, right? Maybe they just need a family member or friend to get that document into the hands of a person who can go, "Oh, now I see you are free to go." You know, and that that happens sometimes. So maybe that's all that needs to happen. But, you know, when in doubt, contact somebody, contact some attorney, contact some organization and try to get some at least some advice um to make sure that you're going in the right direction if you if you're not sure of the way to go. But I have heard that people are able to successfully get down to the Whipple building and you know, show like here's my son's birth certificate. He's a US citizen. Okay. And then, you know, that that'll take care of it. And if it doesn't, if if there's more issues than that beyond that, then you'd want to be reaching out to to some organization. and um you know if you reach out to the wrong organization they probably can steer you to the right one so I wouldn't worry too much about that. >> Thank you. Um another question in the chat is can you define each of the F categories there was mention >> oh that was from that I think that was from the visa bulletin is that right? Yeah, this is the visa bulletin. I I don't want to spend a lot of time on that because that's not um super uh pertinent to it, but I um >> you can absolutely just Google the visa bulletin. Like that's usually what it's called. Um so anyone can access that. Um it's updated monthtomonth of like, you know, what date they're processing um from. And it also has explanations. So it's going to like break it down for you. you know, we're F1 was the example. Um, and it was um, you know, sons and daughters who were 21 or older, but there's other categories. So, yeah, if you literally Google the visa bulletin, um, you can kind of find all of that info. >> Thank you so much. >> It has it right there. Um, okay. How can a person find a notary that is willing to travel to their house? >> It's a good question. >> It's a good question. >> Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know if I have an overall answer because I think it like depends on, you know, where's the person located and things like that. So, I guess the general response would be like an immigrant serving community- based organization in their area. Um, so it's kind of like a a non-answer because I don't know like specifically what ones, but I know that many different organizations have been mobilizing those kinds of services. Um, so it could also be reaching out to, you know, organizations that are working like across Minnesota like UNIDOS, um, and other kind of larger immigrant serving populations to see what they can connect folks with. Um, but I think it's kind of, you know, different organizations popping up and also like grassroots efforts. Um, >> so maybe you know someone through your place of worship who also just happens to be a notary and you know they're a trusted person. So, I think there's also been a lot of those like grassroots efforts um of just trying to get people connected. >> Yeah, I don't think there's like a database at this point, but there are a lot in different areas. So, just connecting with somebody in that specific area would be the way to go. There is also I haven't actually used this, but I believe there is a a way to use an online notary and to notoriize things kind of um virtually. So, um as a kind of last stitch effort, that might be something to look into. But I think for the most part you probably would be able to find somebody. It's not honestly it's not that hard to get um a notary stamp. So um a lot of people have them and a lot of people are I've seen are willing to use them um however they can to help. So it shouldn't be impossible to find somebody who would be willing to do that. So yeah, >> thank you both. The next question is um is the DOPA just here in Minnesota or does it exist in other states as well? the do you want to answer to? >> Yeah, I mean I'll answer to the best of my ability. So the delegation of parental authority that we're talking about today is specific to Minnesota. So like if you go on to the law website, they're going to have the Minnesota form. Um so it's and it's only going to like work here. So you know, if I need someone to take my kids to school, it's going to work here in Minnesota. I can't go enroll my kid those kids in Wisconsin. Um, I don't know if every single state in the US has the same thing, but I know in in other states it does exist. It's just might have a different name or be a different form. Um, so that's kind of the extent of of what I know about dopas in other states. I don't know if you know anything more, Lisa. >> Well, I can just I I don't know what other states have, but I do know that it's created by Minnesota statute. And so then when you the way that it works and the way you have to do it is set out by the statute. So, you would have to look at whatever statute is. So, if you, for example, you have relatives in Michigan and you want the kids to be able to be with them, um, you you'd want to look into that. Okay, what does the Michigan statute say? What, you know, what is it one year? Maybe it's almost exactly the same. Maybe there's some differences. Um, maybe it doesn't have to be notorized. You know, just look at what the statute says. Have an attorney help with that or somebody. Um, but if you know that there's another state where you're going to need this authorization, then you need to look into that specifically. And if they don't have a like DOPAish statute, um they're still going to have some kind of a power of attorney. So in those cases, you'd probably just use that. Just do kind of a basic power of attorney and have that. Um what the main thing is like this is a state-by-state thing. So you're just going to need to look into whatever state it is and then figure out what your best option is to get a document that's going to work there. >> Thank you both so much. Um, another question that we have is, "What are some ways you recommend community members support our immigrant neighbors, particularly in regards to family preparation?" >> A good question. Um, yeah, I mean, I think I have some ideas kind of, um, what I was, you know, alluding to trying to find more like localized networks to plug into. Um, I think that's been a lot of what we've been seeing over the past few months of like, you know, people just like kind of organizing on their block, getting to know their neighbors, getting to know people within, you know, that vicinity who may be especially vulnerable right now and may need more help. Um, so I think, you know, as much as there's either groups already existing or just finding ways to like, you know, figure out who your neighbors are if you don't already know them and going from there. Um, you know, another idea is going through like places of worship like churches. mosques or other places of worship. I know they've been doing a lot to support community members. Um, so that could also be like a more established route to go. Um, and then I mean, yeah, the idea of like, you know, figuring out who in your network's a notary, maybe that could be like a concrete uh way that you can support um, people who need help with their DOPA or other things. Um, those are some of the thoughts that come to my mind. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think that is the main thing is yeah just you know be a be friendly be a friend get to know people in your neighborhood in your networks in your church whatever um demonstrate that you're someone that's that's trustworthy and um you know they may then feel comfortable sharing their needs with you that you know they need somebody to drive their kid to school or they um maybe they need somebody that they can list as the dopa person and maybe you're the most trustworthy person that that they No. Um, are you willing to do that? So, you need to think about too like what are your abilities? What are you willing to do? Um, think about, you know, your own kind of family obligations and things. What are you able to contribute? Cuz I think, um, there's really something for everyone. You know, if you have no time and you, you know, just can't give anything right now, you know, maybe, maybe you can just donate, right? Maybe that's what you can give because other people aren't able to do that. But if you say, "I don't have any money to donate anything." Well, I mean, there's places that are taking like food, you can make a casserole and, you know, bring that to somebody or bring that to a place that's distributing food to people who need it. You don't know who needs it, but they do. You can go drop off that home-cooked food, they can get it to somebody who needs that today. So, there's so many different ways, you know, if you're a notary, you can give that. If you're um somebody who speaks another language and can facilitate some translation, that might be something that's really useful. Um there's just so many ways that you can be helpful. And if you don't know kind of where to start, um just getting involved, you know, somewhere if you have a neighborhood kind of block organization, you can start there. If you're a person of some kind of a faith, you know, maybe you want to just go talk to some people there. So, um, a lot of, uh, things are happening in schools. So, talking to the school, hey, are you guys, you know, doing food drives? Like, can I help out with that? That might be a really good place to start cuz they know who the families are that that need that. Um, rent assistance is a big thing right now. So, so many ways um to support and um you can you can choose what what works best for you. Thank you so much for sharing. I know personally I've seen um you know folks share on their social media if f other if they know people in the community that need red assistance or mutual aid. So I really appreciate both of you sharing that um as this is a community effort. I don't have any other questions at this time. Do either of you have um final statements? >> No, just thank you for having us. Um thank you to everyone participating um and yeah giving us some of your evening time. Really appreciate being here with you all. >> Yes. And absolutely use all the resources that um were provided and share them widely. We want to make sure that they reach whoever needs them. >> Thank you. Thank you both so much. We're so grateful for your time and community tonight. And I also want to give a huge shout out to um all of the commissioners and subcommittee that helped throw this together and for everyone that attended tonight or will watch it in the future. I hope that you are able to find something um and share with your community as well. So, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Take care everyone.