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Trump travel ban brings offers of help from lawyers of all stripes

Kris Olson//February 9, 2017//

Trump travel ban brings offers of help from lawyers of all stripes

Kris Olson//February 9, 2017//

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A group of volunteer lawyers take the evening shift at Logan Airport on Feb. 4.
A group of volunteer lawyers take the evening shift at Logan Airport on Feb. 4.

Rebecca D. “Dee Dee” Edmondson went to Suffolk University Law School part time while working as a legislative director and then lobbyist. She now operates her own Winthrop-based public relations firm, but as a 2010 admittee to the Massachusetts bar, her resume is lean on legal experience. And until recently, immigration law was — pardon the pun — a foreign concept.

Then social media exploded with news that the nation’s airports, including Boston’s Logan, were becoming the epicenter of activism related to President Trump’s executive order banning travel to the United States by citizens of seven mostly Muslim nations. An “all call” went out to attorneys, in particular, to volunteer their time.

Edmondson responded, and she was hardly alone. While the ACLU of Massachusetts and immigration experts such as Kerry E. Doyle of Grave & Doyle, Susan Church of Demissie & Church and Michael S. Gardener of Mintz Levin focused their efforts on U.S. District Court, volunteers such as Edmondson found ways to contribute their talents as well.

Matthew Segal, legal director of the local chapter of the ACLU, says his office was overwhelmed by the “enormous outpouring of offers of help.”

“People were willing to drop everything they were doing to try to deal with the problem of the injustice of the executive orders, even on a Saturday night and into early Sunday morning,” he says.

U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs and U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein were convinced Jan. 29 to issue a temporary restraining order, giving travelers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen a week to enter the U.S. through Boston.

While U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton on Feb. 3 declined to extend the TRO, one of Gorton’s counterparts in Seattle granted an order, at least temporarily stopping enforcement of the travel ban nationally the same day. A challenge to that ruling was set to be heard in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Feb. 7.

As the status of the executive order has evolved, the ACLU has had lawyers from Foley Hoag in its office daily, pitching in with the intake of calls from around the world of people looking to get to the U.S. and Boston in particular, according to Segal.

The law firm of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy has also been heavily involved locally and nationally, setting up the email component of a 24-hour hotline.

Meanwhile, Goodwin attorneys unraveled a crucial civil-procedure question: when, exactly, a seven-day TRO issued in the wee hours of a Sunday morning would expire. The answer: 11:59 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 6, which stood to enable a few more international flights to sneak in under the wire during the day on Monday before the Seattle decision provided similar relief.

Other large firms and solo practitioners have pitched in as well, says Segal, while non-lawyers have brought burritos or breakfast to the ACLU offices.hearsayfreehelp

“It was a tremendously powerful thing to see all those people raise their hands to help,” he says.

Another unlikely participant in the legal effort was Ramon K. Tabtiang, a Boston-based in-house attorney for Google.

He volunteered upon learning the breadth and scope of the executive order, which seemingly fulfilled Trump’s campaign promise to enact a Muslim ban, something “very contrary to American values and the spirit of the Constitution,” Tabtiang says.

Tabtiang reached out on the morning of Jan. 28, and, within a couple of hours, he had become a point person at the airport, arriving to find Church and Attorney General Maura T. Healey already on the scene and addressing the press.

By the end of the day Saturday, Tabtiang had a list of 60 volunteers to help coordinate; by the end of Sunday, it had grown to over 100, expanding to more than 250 in the week that followed. Cloud-based tools are being used to ensure that, whenever international flights arrive, someone is at the table provided by Massport ready to offer legal advice or other support.

Then, an ancillary problem arose that fell right into Edmondson’s wheelhouse. They got word that not every airline was allowing passengers with certain types of visas to board Boston-bound planes, despite the granting of the TRO.

Through the Twitter handle @openboston and the website openboston2017.org, both Edmondson and Tabtiang contributed to an advocacy effort to cajole other airlines to join Lufthansa and Air France, the first two airlines to allow passengers from the banned nations to fly.

Edmondson says she also counseled attorneys who expressed some reticence about having the travelers’ tales become press fodder. But what she says she helped them appreciate is that this battle will continue to be fought in the court of public opinion as much as it is in federal court.

When one of the first flights carrying visa holders, a Lufthansa flight, arrived Feb. 3, the press “definitely got a little aggressive,” Edmondson says.

“They literally swarmed a poor Iraqi family,” she says, adding that she even got hit in the head with a television camera.

That jolt of pain aside, the overriding feeling from the day was joy, Edmondson says.

Heart-warming scenes were almost too numerous to mention. A Harvard Medical School student who had tried three times to get on a flight was welcomed back by a number of her classmates. Another arrival was a grandmother in a wheelchair.

“Even cold-hearted lawyers warmed up and teared up,” she says.

Segal and his wife took their children to the airport on Feb. 4 to help welcome travelers with visas, noting that doing so helped drive home the idea that the people suffering under the executive order are “real human beings” who, upon arrival, are greatly relieved simply to be able to participate in important life events, like seeing a child get married or completing their education.

“This is about the law, but it’s also about people’s lives and also about basic decency, empathy and kindness,” Segal says.

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