MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump administration has issued a sweeping new order that could lead to the arrest of tens of thousands of refugees who are lawfully in the United States but do not yet have permanent residency, overturning years of legal and immigration safeguards.
A memo filed by the Department of Homeland Security ahead of a Thursday federal court hearing in Minnesota says refugees applying for green cards must return to federal custody one year after they were admitted to the U.S. for review of their applications.
DHS “may maintain custody for the duration of the inspection and examination process,” said the memo, which was filed Wednesday.
Advocacy and resettlement groups slammed the order, which is likely to face legal challenges and could sow confusion and fear among the nearly 200,000 refugees who came to the United States during the Biden administration.
The order is the latest in a series of immigration restrictions by the Trump administration, which has upended longstanding policies toward refugees, including dramatically reducing the number admitted into the country. A memo obtained by The Associated Press late last year said the administration was planning a review of all refugees admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration, and immediately suspended green card approvals for refugees who arrived during those years.
The administration has cited national security and economic concerns for its changed policies. Experts say refugees let into the country already undergo extensive vetting.
The new order came hours before U.S. District Judge John Tunheim heard arguments Thursday on whether he should extend a temporary order that protects Minnesota refugees lawfully in the U.S. from being arrested and deported. Tunheim’s order applies only in Minnesota, but the implications of the new national policy were a major part of the discussion anyway.
How many people could be arrested under the new order was unclear.
Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers said during Thursday’s hearing that the government should have the right to arrest refugees one year after entering the U.S., but indicated that would not always happen.
“That’s a discretion call for DHS to make,” he said, a comment met with skepticism by attorneys for the Minnesota refugees.
Tunheim did not rule Thursday, saying he would issue a written decision on whether the temporary order would be extended.
After the hearing, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota said at a news conference outside the courthouse that the government “failed to offer any coherent argument for their policy in either law or fact.” She wasn’t in court for the hearing, but said she had been briefed about it.
“And so we will continue the fight for justice in the courts,” Smith said, flanked by attorneys and refugee rights supporters, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Immigration advocates quickly pushed back against the new policy, with HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit serving refugees and asylum seekers, calling it “a transparent effort to detain and potentially deport thousands of people who are legally present in this country, people the U.S. government itself welcomed.”
“They were promised safety and the chance to rebuild their lives. Instead, DHS is now threatening them with arrest and indefinite detention,” Beth Oppenheim, the group’s CEO, said in a statement.
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Tunheim blocked the government from targeting the Minnesota refugees last month, saying the plaintiffs in the case were likely to prevail on their claims “that their arrest and detention, and the policy that purports to justify them, are unlawful.” His Jan. 28 temporary restraining order will expire Feb. 25 unless he grants a more permanent preliminary injunction.
The judge previously rejected the government’s claim that it had the legal right to arrest and detain refugees who have not obtained their green cards within a year of arriving in the U.S.
“Mandating detention would lead to an illogical result,” Tunheim wrote, since refugees can’t even apply for green cards until they’ve been in the U.S. for a year. The government’s interpretation, he said, means nearly all refugees would face detention unless immigration officials conducted their review at exactly the one-year mark, which he called “nonsensical.”
Refugee rights groups sued the federal government in January after the government launched Operation PARRIS, an acronym for Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening.
It was billed as a “sweeping initiative” to reexamine the cases of 5,600 Minnesota refugees who had not yet been granted permanent resident status, or green cards. The agencies cited fraud in public programs in Minnesota as justification.
Operation PARRIS was part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown targeting Minnesota, including a surge of thousands of federal officers. Homeland Security called it the largest immigration enforcement operation ever. It set off mass protests after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens. White House border czar Tom Homan announced last week that the surge was ending, though a small federal presence would remain.
The lawsuit alleges that ICE officers went door to door under Operation PARRIS arresting refugees and sending them to detention centers in Texas, without access to attorneys. Some were later released in Texas and left to find their own way back to Minnesota, they said.
Tunheim noted in his order that refugees are extensively vetted by multiple agencies before being resettled in the U.S. He wrote that none arrested in the operation had been deemed a danger to the community or a flight risk, nor had any been charged with crimes that could be grounds for deportation.
Tunheim stressed that the refugees impacted by his order were admitted into the U.S. because of persecution in their home countries. He prohibited further arrests under Operation PARRIS and ordered that detainees still in custody from it be released and returned to Minnesota.
“They are not committing crimes on our streets, nor did they illegally cross the border. Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully,” he wrote.
