A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily barred the Trump administration from detaining refugees in Minnesota who do not yet have green cards, following a bid by the administration to reexamine thousands of refugees’ cases.
The temporary restraining order was brought about by the International Refugee Assistance Project and other organizations, on behalf of a group of refugees who have been detained by immigration authorities or fear detention.
“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully—and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries,” wrote U.S. District Judge John Tunheim. “At its best, America serves as a haven of individual liberties in a world too often full of tyranny and cruelty. We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos.”
Tunheim’s order focuses on the Department of Homeland Security’s plan — known as Operation PARRIS — to review the immigration cases of roughly 5,600 people who currently live in Minnesota legally with refugee status but aren’t yet lawful permanent residents in the U.S. The department has said the program will involve conducting new interviews and background checks for those refugees, who were initially vetted before entering the country.
The legal challenge against the program alleges that federal authorities “implemented a practice of arresting and detaining — without notice or warrant — individuals previously screened and admitted into the United States as refugees,” Tunheim wrote in his restraining order.
Tunheim said the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the government doesn’t have the legal right to detain refugees who aren’t facing possible deportation.
The judge’s order prohibits the Trump administration from detaining refugees in Minnesota on the basis that “they are a refugee who has not been adjusted to lawful resident status.”
He also ordered the administration to “immediately release” anyone covered by the ruling who is currently detained. Any refugees who are detained out-of-state must be transported back to Minnesota and released within five days.
Kimberly Grano, a staff attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in a statement: “For more than two weeks, refugees in Minnesota have been living in terror of being hunted down and disappeared to Texas. This Temporary Restraining Order will immediately put in place desperately-needed guardrails on ICE and protect resettled refugees from being unlawfully targeted for arrest and detention.”
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on X in response to the ruling: “The judicial sabotage of democracy is unending.”
A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson called the ruling “yet another lawless and activist order from the federal judiciary who continues to undermine our immigration laws.”
“Minnesota is ground zero for the war on fraud,” the spokesperson said. “This operation in Minnesota demonstrates that the Trump administration will not stand idly by as the U.S. immigration system is weaponized by those seeking to defraud the American people.”
Wednesday’s ruling came amid a two-month-long crackdown by federal immigration authorities in Minnesota, with around 3,000 federal agents carrying out roughly 3,400 arrests. It also follows an unprecedented November order by the Trump administration, obtained by CBS News, to review the cases of refugees admitted under former President Joe Biden and identify potential reasons why they might be ineligible to stay in the U.S.
