The Advocates for Human Rights (AHR)

It opposed the second Trump administration’s immigration-law enforcement campaign in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and is as of January 2026 a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the legality and constitutionality of U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies regarding the detention and removal of refugees. ²

Overview

The Advocates for Human Rights was founded by a group of left-of-center attorneys in 1983 as the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee.  ³ Originally created to focus on international law, it shifted its primary focus over time to pro-immigration advocacy and legal services for immigrants and refugees in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. ⁴

The group’s first project was working with medical and legal professionals in Minnesota to develop standards for investigations and prosecutions regarding suspicious or unlawful deaths, which would eventually form the basis of the United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary, and Summary Executions. The standards would come to be known as “The Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death.”  ⁵

In 2025, long-time AHR staff member Michelle Garnett McKenzie became the organization’s executive director. She replaced Robin Phillips, who had held that role for more than 22 years. ⁶

The majority of AHR’s board members are practicing or retired attorneys from law firms and major corporations in Minnesota. ⁷

Activism

The Advocates for Human Rights was founded in 1983 by left-of-center attorneys “seeking to leverage Minnesota’s spirit of social justice,” and it continues to promote left-of-center positions on legal and social policy areas such as immigration, labor law, race, gender, and sexuality. ⁸

AHR supported the TRACK ICE Act proposed by U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) that would force Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to publicize flight data for aircraft transporting individuals in ICE detention. ⁹

AHR provides legal and technical assistance to immigrants and refugees who are attempting to use human rights law and other forms of advocacy to create policy and political change in their countries of origin. ¹⁰

AHR opposes the death penalty and works to abolish it worldwide. It is on the steering committee of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. ¹¹

Second Trump Administration Immigration Enforcement

The Advocates for Human Rights actively opposed the second Trump administration’s expanded “Operation PARRIS” immigration-law enforcement operations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region in 2025 and 2026, which AHS referred to as an “ICE terror campaign.”  ² In legal filings in late January 2026, AHR claimed to have “devoted the last several weeks to responding to Operation PARRIS.”  ¹²

Litigation

The Advocates for Human Rights is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed in January 2026 against U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration immigration officials by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, and left-of-center class-action law firm Berger Montague.  ²

The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are individuals who claim refugee status, and the suit attempts to claim class-action status for “all refugees residing in the state of Minnesota who have not yet adjusted status and have not been charged with any ground for removal under the [Immigration and Nationality Act].” ¹²

The plaintiffs asked the court to invalidate the Trump administration’s refugee detention and removal policy, release the individual plaintiffs and other lawfully admitted refugees arrested under the policy, enjoin future ICE arrests of lawfully admitted refugees without a warrant, and award court costs to the plaintiffs. ¹²

In the filing, AHR claimed that its “core business activities have been significantly impacted and disrupted by Defendants’ Operation PARRIS,” and that “it has been unable to assist clients that it would have ordinarily served or continue other existing work in service of its organizational priorities.”  ¹²

On January 18, 2026, federal judge John R. Tunheim ruled that the federal government could not transfer defendants being held in immigration detention out of Minnesota until the lawsuit was resolved, and ordered them returned to Minnesota in the event that the government had already done so. ¹³

Support for Minnesota Lawsuit Against DHS

In January 2026, The Advocates for Human Rights filed an amicus curiae brief in support of a federal lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) and the municipal governments of Minneapolis and St. Paul against Secretary Noem and other federal immigration officials.  ³ In its brief, AHR claimed that the federal government was violating international human rights law in its immigration enforcement efforts. ³

It also argued that the shooting of immigration activist Renee Good by an ICE agent was an “extrajudicial and arbitrary killing,” and that the federal government’s reaction to the shooting violated international standards on investigations into suspicious or unlawful deaths that AHR’s predecessor organization had a hand in crafting in the 1980s. ³

Finances

In 2025, The Advocates for Human Rights reported $4,774,507 in revenues. This included $2,810,788 in private donations, $1,197,342 in government grants, and $601,694 in contract revenues. ^{14 15}

Its funders have included the Ford Foundation, ¹⁶ the Bush Foundation, ¹⁷ the John Merck Fund, ¹⁸ the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Immigrant Justice Corps, Human and Civil Rights Organizations Of America, the Vera Institute of Justice, the Proteus Fund, the Minneapolis Foundation, the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation, the National Christian Charitable Foundation, and the Mayo Clinic. ¹⁹

AHR also receives significant donations through donor-advised funds operated by the American Gift Fund, the Blackbaud Giving Fund, the Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund, the Network for Good, the National Philanthropic Trust, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, the American Online Giving Foundation, Donor Advised Charitable Giving, and other major fiduciaries. ¹⁹

AHR received a $100,000 grant in 2022 from the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a left-of-center bail fund and nonprofit that had raised more than $30 million in donations after the death of George Floyd in May 2020. ^{20  19}

It receives regular donations from bar association foundations such as the Foundation of the Federal Bar Association and the Minnesota State Bar Foundation, as well as foundations created by law firms in the Minneapolis area, such as the Dorsey and Whitney Foundation, the Frederikson and Byron Foundation, the Lathrop GPM Foundation, and the Faegre Baker Daniels Foundation.  ^{21  19}