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It can happen here. In fact, it is<\/em> happening here.<\/p>\n Forced disappearances. People seized and deported for political speech or imprisoned abroad without due process. Mass firings of federal workers. The gutting of federal agencies and safety-net programs that have been in place for generations. A judge in Milwaukee arrested and paraded in handcuffs for not cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The speed and sheer lawlessness of the Trump Administration\u2019s campaign of destruction is head-spinning.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to be overwhelmed, and that\u2019s the point. If people feel terrified and powerless, they won\u2019t resist\u2014perfect conditions for an aspiring dictator.<\/p>\n I recently spoke to some attorneys in my home state of Wisconsin who have thrust aside despair and are working to combat Donald Trump\u2019s assault on civil liberties and the rule of law. By doing what they can where they are, they are making a difference. Their example shines a light for all of us. Instead of retreating from the avalanche of bad news, \u201cWe can do something,\u201d as Grant Sovern, an immigration attorney in Madison, tells me.<\/p>\n Sovern leads the\u00a0Community Immigration Law Center<\/a>\u00a0(CILC), one of about thirty-five organizations around the country set up to defend immigrants facing the threat of deportation. He and the attorneys with whom he works are frantically raising money to provide legal help to immigrants in Dane County, and hope to eventually expand services to the entire state.<\/p>\n At CILC, Sovern and his colleagues have been working on cases since the first Trump Administration, defending people against deportation. The group\u2019s mission is to ensure that everyone in Dane County who needs an immigration attorney gets one. It\u2019s a significant step toward upholding the rule of law generally.<\/p>\n \u201cNot everyone is actually deportable who ICE thinks is deportable,\u201d Sovern says. \u201cMaybe ICE has it wrong . . . . People don\u2019t know. You need an advocate who knows the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n Sovern points to an\u00a0evaluation<\/a>\u00a0of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, the nation\u2019s first public defender service for immigrants facing deportation. The project provides lawyers to all low-income immigrants facing deportation proceedings in New York City. Before the project, only 4 percent of those challenging deportation were successful. Once they were provided with attorneys, the rate of success rose to 48 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cSo half of the people who were being deported shouldn\u2019t be,\u201d Sovern says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like these lawyers were getting around the law. They were applying the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n Even under the current administration, applying the rules makes a difference. At this moment, \u201cwhen everyone feels so hopeless,\u201d Sovern says, CILC is demonstrating that \u201cwe can do something.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the nonprofit law firm\u2019s clients have been going through immigration court proceedings for years. Others are new clients who are challenging deportation orders and winning.<\/p>\n The U.S. Supreme Court has responded cautiously to the Trump Administration\u2019s overreach as it deports people without due process. So far, it has temporarily\u00a0applied the brakes<\/a>\u00a0on Trump\u2019s use of the\u00a0Alien Enemies Act<\/a>\u00a0in a middle-of-the-night\u00a0emergency order<\/a>\u00a0on April 19 and by\u00a0insisting<\/a>\u00a0that deportees\u2019 cases be heard in the courts where they are located.<\/p>\n For people Trump is targeting with the novel use of that obscure 1798 wartime law, \u201cthe only due process you have is this\u00a0habeas corpus\u00a0petition,\u201d Sovern explains\u2014a petition demanding that the government bring people it has detained before a court and justify their detention.<\/p>\n Sovern knows one of the lawyers who wrote the habeas petition for\u00a0R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk<\/a>, the Tufts University graduate student who was snatched off the street in Somerville by masked federal agents and spirited away to a Louisiana detention center. \u00d6zt\u00fcrk\u2019s lawyers filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts within five hours, Sovern says, but it was too late. Neither her attorneys nor her friends and family knew where she was, and she was unable to speak to her lawyers until after she was flown out of state.<\/p>\n In Vermont, a state \u00d6zt\u00fcrk traveled through as government agents were taking her to Louisiana, U.S. District Judge William Sessions ruled that she must be returned to New England no later than May 1 to determine whether she was illegally detained for co-writing an op-ed piece in her student newspaper supporting Palestinian victims of the war in Gaza. Then, on May 9, Sessions\u00a0ordered her release<\/a>\u00a0after she had spent six weeks in ICE detention.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is really dramatic how much it takes,\u201d Sovern says of the struggle against Trump\u2019s war on immigrants, due process, and civil liberties. But he and his colleagues are rising to the challenge.<\/p>\n CILC\u2019s goal is to be prepared for anything. \u201cAs long as we have some process, we are going to make that available,\u201d Sovern says. \u201cIt\u2019s going to cost a lot, and we\u2019ll need expert lawyers to do it. But we\u2019re going to find a way. If the Supreme Court and the court system give people any type of due process at all, we have to be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Wisconsin lawyer who is challenging authoritarianism is Jeff Mandell, co-founder of\u00a0Law Forward<\/a>, a law firm focused on voting rights that brought the first case against the Republican fake electors who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think any of us fully anticipated how heavy, broad, fast, and extreme the onslaught was going to be,\u201d Mandell concedes, referring to Trump\u2019s efforts to seize unprecedented power, weaponize the federal government against his political enemies, defy court orders, and throw the entire global economy into chaos.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of what we are seeing and hearing is so contrary to our most fundamental understanding of what we believe about our government, I have to believe this is temporary and that people won\u2019t stand for it,\u201d Mandell says.<\/p>\n Since its founding in October 2020, Law Forward has pursued high-profile lawsuits that have helped claw back democracy in Wisconsin. The firm\u00a0challenged<\/a>\u00a0the state\u2019s now defunct gerrymandered voting maps and\u00a0uncovered<\/a>\u00a0the details of the fake electors scheme that originated here\u2014forcing the Republican officials who cast fraudulent Electoral College ballots for Trump in 2020 to admit they were trying to subvert the will of the voters. On the\u00a0public website<\/a>\u00a0Law Forward created to display the details of this scheme, which it obtained as a condition of a settlement, the organization states that it wants to show \u201chow close our democracy came to toppling and how the freedom to vote must continue to be protected, not taken for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n As a Wisconsin-based organization, Law Forward looks for opportunities to pursue cases that are of particular importance to the state and that shine a light on threats to democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rest of the time we don\u2019t sit in paralysis because of the news,\u201d Mandell says. Whatever fresh hell is erupting across the country, the attorneys at Law Forward \u201ccontinue to work here so people see an alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0ten-point margin<\/a>\u00a0in the recent state supreme court election, in which progressive-backed candidate Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, who was supported by Trump and benefited from millions of dollars from billionaire Elon Musk, \u201creinforces my conviction that the majority of Wisconsinites really do believe in democracy,\u201d Mandell says.<\/p>\n A few weeks after MAGA lost its bid to disempower the progressive female majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Trump Administration sent federal agents to\u00a0arrest<\/a>\u00a0Judge Hannah Dugan at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Dugan is accused of helping a defendant in her courtroom evade ICE officers who came to arrest him there. Trump\u2019s attorney general and the man he chose to lead the FBI gleefully posted pictures of Dugan\u2019s \u201cperp walk\u201d in handcuffs, crowing about this unprecedented assault on the dignity and authority of a judge and the sovereignty of local courts. The charges against Dugan are extremely thin. On April 25, she was\u00a0charged with<\/a>\u00a0a misdemeanor and a felony, the latter only having been used in two other instances in more than a half century. The man she ushered through a side door in her courtroom emerged into a public hallway where federal agents saw him, followed him outside and arrested him. The ongoing case is an important test of Trump\u2019s ability to upend the rule of law by intimidating judges.<\/p>\n Mobilizing citizens on the state level matters in the national struggle. And protecting independent, democratic institutions on the state and local level can serve as a model for the rest of the country, reminding people what civil society looks like. As Mandell sees it, \u201cbuilding a stronger, more resilient democracy in Wisconsin is its own form of resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no one silver bullet,\u201d Mandell says. \u201cBut the goal is to continue to tend the lamp here in Wisconsin, to shine a light that illuminates the path to balance, order, and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It can happen here. In fact, it is happening here. Forced disappearances. People seized and deported for political speech or imprisoned abroad without due process. Mass firings of federal workers. The gutting of federal agencies and safety-net programs that have been in place for generations. A judge in Milwaukee arrested and paraded in handcuffs for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[22086,19395,16159,93189,3485,13747,2083,49822,6692,49823],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-260209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-authoritarianism","tag-fighting","tag-human-rights","tag-june-july-2025","tag-level","tag-local","tag-magazine","tag-middle-america","tag-politics","tag-ruth-conniff"],"yoast_head":"\n