A $25 million donation to the University of Minnesota Law School will solidify a unique partnership between lawyers and students to provide free legal services to immigrants and refugees.

The law school’s largest-ever gift comes from the Robina Foundation, whose money established the school’s Center for New Americans in 2013. After a three-year test, the foundation last summer committed to a large, sustaining gift.

That the donation was announced Monday, as the courts grapple with the legality of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on refugees and limits on travel, was coincidental. Still, Robina’s chair, the retired state Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, allowed that the legal challenges “underscore the timeliness of this endowment.”

“We only need to look at the headlines today to understand the importance of this gift,” University President Eric Kaler said in a news conference Monday announcing the donation.

In a lawsuit against Trump brought by the states of Minnesota and Washington, a federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the travel ban. The center is assisting in that suit by compiling stories of those affected by the action, said director Benjamin Casper Sanchez.

The center is a partnership between U students and lawyers from the Dorsey & Whitney, Faegre Baker Daniels and Robins Kaplan law firms, as well as the nonprofit Immigration Law Center of Minnesota, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and The Advocates for Human Rights.

In 2015, the students and lawyers won a U.S. Supreme Court case after arguing that a Tunisian noncitizen’s conviction for hiding unspecified pills in his sock should not trigger deportation.

Last year, 50 law students worked on cases.

Casper Sanchez said there’s a substantial need for legal advice, no matter who is in office.

“We’ve been here for four years working cases across two administrations. The issues we’re struggling with now predate the last two administrations and administrations before that,” he said.

In fact, the United States deported more people under President Barack Obama than any other president.

CENTER RENAMED

The university said $23.5 million of the gift will be placed in an endowment to permanently support the center. Another $1 million will establish a professorship in clinical law, and $500,000 will support scholarships for law students.

The center will be renamed for the late James H. Binger, who was Robina’s founder and a 1941 graduate of the law school. With the latest donation, the foundation has altogether committed nearly $60 million in donations to the law school.

Born in St. Paul in 1916, Binger worked for Dorsey & Whitney after law school and became president and later chairman of the board at Honeywell.

His foundation also supports Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Yale University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in economics.

Binger’s father-in-law was 3M president and board chairman William L. McKnight, himself a major philanthropist.

Blatz said Binger wanted to fund “innovative and transformational” projects. She credited the law school’s previous dean, David Wippman, with identifying the unmet need for pro bono legal services for immigrants and refugees.

Unlike in criminal cases, people facing deportation do not have the right to a court-appointed lawyer.

“We saw the potential in it,” Blatz said.

Three years in, the center easily exceeded benchmarks the foundation had set. And with Binger’s deadline approaching — he wanted all of his money spent within 20 years of his 2004 death — the law school offered an opportunity for the foundation to move toward a goal of its own.

“With today’s gift, I think we’re working very quickly to that finish line,” Blatz said.