Refugees awaiting US green cards face custody review under Trump order

New US DHS memo could require thousands of refugees to return to custody for review, prompting legal warnings and sharp backlash from advocacy groups

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 says refugees applying for green cards must return to federal custody one year after they were admitted to the US 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 have sharply criticised the order, which will likely face legal challenges and could create confusion and fear among the nearly 200,000 refugees who came to the United States during the Biden administration.

   

“This is wildly illegal. There is no legal justification to detain legal refugees,” said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney, in a social media post.

 

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.

 

The administration has cited national security and economic concerns for its changed policies. Experts say refugees admitted into the country already undergo extensive vetting.

 

What the memo said

 

“[The Department of Homeland Security] must treat the one-year mark as a mandatory re-vetting point for all refugees who have not adjusted to [Lawful Permanent Resident] status, ensuring either that they are scheduled to ‘return’ to custody for inspection or, if they do not comply, that they be ‘returned’ to custody through enforcement action,” the memo reads.

 

The directive gives ICE the power to “maintain custody” of these refugees “for the duration of the inspection and examination process”. That review, officials said, is meant to determine whether refugees obtained their status through fraud or whether they pose a threat to national security or public safety because of potential ties to terrorism or serious criminal histories.

 

The memo says refugees who raise red flags during this examination may be stripped of their legal status and processed for deportation.

 

Who will be impacted?

 

Advocacy groups say the move could affect nearly 200,000 refugees who arrived in the United States during the Biden administration and have not yet secured permanent residency.

 

In practical terms:

 

> Refugees awaiting green cards may be required to report to federal custody

> Those who fail to comply could face enforcement action

> Individuals flagged during review could lose legal status

> Some cases may move into deportation proceedings

 

Immigration lawyers say the scale of the order could create uncertainty for families still in the adjustment-of-status process.

 

Who are refugees in America?

 

Refugees in the US are individuals forced to flee their home countries due to war, persecution, or violence based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group membership. Admitted through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), they undergo intense vetting before resettling to rebuild their lives, with major populations in recent years originating from countries like Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine.

 

Advocacy groups decry the new order

 

HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit serving refugees and asylum-seekers, called it “a transparent effort to detain and potentially deport thousands of people who are legally present in this country, people the US 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,” said Beth Oppenheim, the group’s CEO, in a statement.

 

“I have never seen anything like this in my 25 years of refugee protection work,” Oppenheim said. “This memo was done in secret, with zero coordination with the organisations that serve refugees. It is a betrayal of our values and our legal commitments, and it will cause extraordinary harm.”

 

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.

 

“This move follows a year of attacks to that legacy, as refugee admissions were halted, the refugee cap reduced to the lowest in history, and the systems and structures of the program dismantled, leaving hundreds of thousands of refugees stranded overseas,” HIAS said.

 

It was billed as a “sweeping initiative” to re-examine 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 programmes 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 sparked mass protests after federal agents shot and killed two US citizens. White House border czar Tom Homan announced last week the surge was ending, though a small federal presence would remain.