Michigan Immigrant Rights Center attorney Ana Raquel Devereaux represents unaccompanied minors and other children, primarily in seeking asylum.
LEGAL NEWS PHOTO BY CYNTHIA PRICE
by Cynthia Price
Legal News
In this era of controversy over immigrants and immigration law, a small team of dedicated attorneys work from an office in Grand Rapids to be sure that the rights of those entering the country are protected.
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center plays a number of roles as a legal resource for immigrant communities in the state. According to its mission statements, “MIRC works to build a thriving Michigan where immigrant communities experience equity and belonging.”
Like some other agencies within the state, MIRC?got its start primarily in offering support for and answering questions from attorneys. As the need has grown, and working mainly through granted funds, MIRC has expanded its roles to include educating and conducting training about immigrant law and immigrant rights; recruiting pro bono attorneys, as well as training them; promoting mutual respect between immigrants and the communities that receive them, through a fairly new program called Welcoming Michigan; and representing individual clients in everything from naturalization to domestic violence matters.
In addition, primarily through the work of Managing Attorney Susan Reed, MIRC?takes a leadership role in advocacy to advance the well-being and rights of low-income and other immigrants and builds coalitions among statewide organizations and agencies who work to serve this goal. Advocacy activities include tracking and analyzing legislation, and Reed is often called upon as a resource in Lansing, including testifying before legislators.
MIRC is considered a program of the Michigan Statewide Advocacy Services and, as reported previously, the Michigan Advocacy Program. (More information about MIRC?can be accessed both through its own website, michiganimmigrant.org, and at miadvocacy.org, where visitors will find its annual and funding reports.
The other managing attorney, Ruby Robinson, works out of Ann Arbor with many of the staff attorneys; Susan Reed, though her work takes her all over the state, calls home base the office in Kalamazoo.
The Grand Rapids office grew out of the Kalamazoo office. As Ana Raquel Devereaux, a supervising attorney working in the area of minor children, tells it, “I was a big part of that decision when my husband got a job at Cornerstone. I already had a lot of clients in Grand Rapids and so we used shared space so that I wouldn’t go to Kalamazoo as often. It was somewhat of an informal move at first.”
However, Staff Attorney Catherine Villanueva, whose focus is on victims of domestic violence and crime, said that the Grand Rapids office was a good move for her because almost all of her clients are in Kent County.
As the office grew out of its original home in a church, Hillary Scholten, who works with farmworkers, joined the team and in February Katrina Pradelski joined the staff to work on the same minor children program as Devereaux.
It was at that time the group moved into its current office on East Beltline.
It is clear that all of these lawyers are passionate about their clients and the work of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
Devereaux started at MIRC in late 2014, working through a grant on unaccompanied children seeking asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, and the T-visas that reflect someone who was trafficked into the U.S. (The similar U-visas, which Villanueva covers, may include becoming a victim of trafficking after coming to the states.)
Raised in the Dominican Republic in a missionary family, Devereaux attended Calvin College, receiving her undergraduate degree in International Relations with a minor in Latin American Studies. She went into law School at Wayne State University already intending to be an immigration attorney, using the fluent Spanish she learned growing up. (Although she points out that even much of the Spanish-speaking population she deals with were not native speakers, instead raised with indigenous “dialects” which sound like completely different languages.)
Through her work with Bethany Christian Services in Kent County, and to a lesser degree Samaritas on the east side of the state, Devereaux has sought to obtain legal status for children in a variety of circumstances, appearing in the Immigration Court in Detroit. Because Bethany is the only agency in Michigan doing short-term foster care placements, Devereaux has been assisting with the headline-generating separated families.
“For most of the separated children,” she says, “we ask them what their wishes are, and most of them said it was to be with their parents. So it depends on what options their parents have.” Devereaux also says that when one of her clients leaves Michigan, she attempts to monitor their progress.
The June 20 presidential order which mandated family reunification be done only through eight immigration centers around the country means that now separated minors will not be coming to Michigan. Such rapid changes in the law make for a challenging job.
“There’s not a better time to be an immigration attorney, but there’s also not a more frustrating time,” Devereaux comments.
Catherine Villanueva says that such challenges, which make immigration law incredibly complicated, are one of the reasons she feels MIRC?is so necessary. “I open the Kurzbans Immigration Law Sourcebook. It costs something like $1500, but it’s worth it,” she says.
Villanueva’s work takes its boundaries from the Victims of Crime Act, and she focuses on immigration relief for victims, including those of domestic violence and sexual assault, as well as human trafficking. She points out that sometimes in labor trafficking, victims are not even aware that it has happened; they just know that they are suffering.
After graduating from Western Michigan University, Villanueva went to the University of Toledo College of Law, with a break in between to develop her own business in Chicago and work for Samsung in South Korea.
“People ask me if this isn’t really depressing work, but what keeps me going is that my clients are really strong people. At first, people who were victims of crime might be crying when I interview them or feel hopeless, but after I meet with them two or three times, you see the flicker of hope. They’re getting some power back in their lives,” she says.
The Michigan Bar Foundation is the major source of funding for Hillary Scholten’s work with farmworkers, which includes employment law, sexual harassment, wage and hour complaints and some immigration benefits.
She graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 2012, clerked in the Immigration Unit of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, also working as an accredited advisor through the Board of Immigration Appeals, assisting immigrants and refugees with a wide range of immigration legal needs.
Finally, the newest Grand Rapids office member, Katrina Pradelski, received her J.D. from Valparaiso University School of Law in 2015. She practiced immigration law in a nonprofit setting for three years before joining MIRC.
She also works with minors, represent them in removal proceedings in immigration court, as well as before immigration agencies.
“I'm grateful to be at MIRC in [this] program. Working with these kids and being part of their story has been such a gratifying and humbling experience - to be part of the story of someone who will one day change the world is such a privilege,” she says.
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