Cleveland Immigration Summit Talks Trump 2.0 Questions Amid Surge of Refugee Arrivals

County Councilwoman Meredith Turner, immigration policy expert Rob Frost, U.S. District Judge Philip Calabrese and attorney Aleksandar Cuic at a panel at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association on Wednesday. Attorneys, experts and immigrants gathered in a brainstorming session concerned with the Trump administration’s strict border policy. Credit: Mark Oprea

On Wednesday, about a hundred people—politicians, students, policy experts and dozens of immigration attorneys—gathered in an auditorium at the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association in the One Center Building downtown.

Organized by Global Cleveland head Joe Cimperman, Wednesday’s meet was a six-hour-long brainstorm intended to spark ideas and handshake connections to best prepare for an incoming Trump administration dead set on shaking up the U.S. immigration system.

It was also a reality check as President Biden’s more laissez-faire approach to immigrants and the resulting last-minute surge of refugee arrivals in U.S. cities—hundreds here in Cleveland—48 days before Trump’s promise to kickstart a plan revolving around mass deportations on January 20. (“Seal the Border and Stop the Migrant Invasion,” is the first step on the GOP to-do list.)

A plan that’s still a bit vague. While Trump has kept somewhat mum on the details of supposed executive orders to come, immigration experts have turned to Project 2025’s Mandate For Leadership as a likely blueprint for policy—a document that suggests reinstating the Muslim Ban, doubling the number of ICE’s deportation officers and tightening access to visas for temporary seasonal jobs and for certain cases of asylum.

Ideas that, along with Trump’s windy posts on Truth Social, have led to a massive spike, several refugee resettlement workers told Scene, of asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It’s difficult,” Andy Trares, the deputy director of the May Dugan Center in Ohio City who’s also in charge of guiding refugees to housing and job opportunities in Cleveland, said.

From last fall until November, May Dugan gave assistance to roughly 150 people needing help making a life in Cleveland. Today, and leading up to January 20, Trarer said they’ll be in charge of helping resettle 339 people. That’s combined with about 70 people a week at the Cuyahoga County Welcome Center in Old Brooklyn.

“It’s tough because we hear the rhetoric around immigration, and that’s not a reality of who we’re meeting and who we’re serving,” he added. “People are excited to be here. They’re excited to start a new life with their family, and contribute to their community.”

Trares’ sentiment—that Cuyahoga County’s take on immigration is at loggerheads with the take of the incoming administration’s—enveloped the conversation at Wednesday’s summit. The questions ran accordingly: Would we have enough resources during the refugee surge? Will parole cases, like those involving war-torn Ukrainians, head into U.S. District courts?

Ankit Nagadene, a 31-year-old MBA graduate from Case Western Reserve, went to the Symposium on Wednesday to see if he could clarify how remaining in the U.S. after graduation would function under another Trump administration. Credit: Mark Oprea

Cimperman, the host and emcee of the Post-Election Immigration Symposium, told Scene that he felt local connections across sectors were the best way to bolster pro-immigration plans on a legal and political level. And that, come 2025, Wednesday’s event could be a model for monthly immigration clinics, if need be.

And of course a reminder that any mass deportation plan ultimately impacts Ohio’s economy. And a probable ramping up of a six percent loss in state population from 2020 to 2050—more than 675,000 people, gone.

“This is our situation now: we need to be welcoming for people to move here,” Rob Frost, a state immigration policy expert, said on a morning panel of four on Wednesday.

“If we’re welcoming, and there are opportunities to find work, if there are the other support services that someone needs and they choose to come here, then our population declines less by one fewer person,” he added. “If a whole family comes here, then that helps us.”

Frost’s principle, which echoed the overall ethos of Global Cleveland, was tied to many of the panelists’ thoughts that day: the more one understands the minute details of U.S. immigration law, the more comfortable they’ll feel opening businesses, applying for mortgages, raising children.

All which brought up a key point: any major alterations to immigration law—how farm visas are handed out, whether or not human trafficking victims get legal status—have to go through Congress, and are not re-engineered by an executive order in late January.

While Republicans have a majority of the House, Senate, White House and the Supreme Court, any groundbreaking shakeups in the naturalization process, like ending birthright citizen, are unlikely to go through.

“I mean, that’s part of our Constitution! You’d have to repeal the 14th Amendment,” Frost said. “And even if you have the political will is there to do that, it wouldn’t be retroactive. I also don’t expect there to be a policy of mandatory splitting of the family. I don’t.”

Frost’s comments sparked U.S. District Judge Philip Calabrese.

“Remember: if you want change, if you want policy change, if you don’t file a federal lawsuit,” he said, looking to the crowd, “you go talk to your members of Congress.”

Meredith Turner, who was an immigration advisor to former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown before her election to County Council, thought back to her past job as a reminder of how local governments may surmount themselves over a national zeitgeist.

She hinted at the County’s Welcome Center, which has assisted, she said, some 4,700 people in Cleveland since opening in February.

“I mean, we can work to streamline business permits. We can provide financial assistance. We can offer access to small business loans and grants. We can connect people to mentors,” she said. “There’s a lot we can do right here.”

Business success is what partly brought Ankit Nagadene, a recent MBA graduate from Case Western Reserve University, out to Wednesday’s symposium. Orginally from Mumbai, Nagadene’s intrigue with the American tech industry, and itch to work in it, is now up the air based on the Trump 2.0 nudge towards, as Project 2025 puts it, the “oft-abused” H-1B foreign worker lottery program.

Nagadene, who said he loves Cleveland and would like to stay here for the long term, said his dilemma became all the more apparent on Wednesday. Does he bank on a lottery system for an “elite” work visa? Does he rely on, say, a Google or Intel covering his legal status? A STEM-distinct visa for foreign students wanting to stay after

“Here’s the thing. Work opportunities are going to shrink as soon as the new administration gets into office,” Nagadene, 31, told Scene. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“And as soon as, like, hundreds of thousands of students are on the same legal status? They might not get the job,” he added. “Just because of the kind of things the new administration is going to implement.”