How to help immigrant communities in Minneapolis and beyond: Support the Defending Our Neighbors Fund
By Greisa Martinez-Rosas The horrors we’ve seen unfold in Minneapolis are a predictable escalation of an administration that has encouraged reckless, militarized immigration enforcement with little accountability or regard for due process. As enforcement becomes more extreme, access to legal help is disappearing. In immigration court, there is no guaranteed right to a lawyer. Parents facing deportation, and permanent separation from their children, are expected to represent themselves against trained government attorneys. Even children can be forced to appear in court alone. That is why United We Dream, the ACLU, and the Abundant Futures Fund launched the Defending Our Neighbors Fund — and why support for it is urgently needed right now. I know these stakes personally. When I was a child, my father was detained at a traffic stop. My family could not afford a lawyer, and my dad was deported. That brutal experience shaped my life and informs the work I do every day. The outcomes are not a mystery. People with lawyers are far more likely to stay with their families, while
