Feb. 19 (UPI) — Federal agents can now arrest and detain refugees who have been in the United States for one year if they have not yet applied for a green card, according to a memo submitted to a court by lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security.
“When a refugee is admitted to the United States, the admission is conditional and subject to a mandatory review after one year,” the memo said. It added that refugees who are detained may stay in custody “for the duration of the inspection and examination process.”
The memo was signed by Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow and Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons. It overturns the previous government policy — set in 2010 by the James Chaparro Memo — which did not allow detention after a year. Chaparro was the assistant director of intelligence for ICE at the time he created the memo.
“This memo was done in secret, with zero coordination with the organizations that serve refugees,” Beth Oppenheim, CEO of refugee agency HIAS, told CNN. “This policy is 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 after years of extreme vetting.”
The International Refugee Assistance Project is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the government in Minnesota — U.H.A. vs. Bondi. A judge temporarily blocked the administration from targeting about 5,600 lawful refugees who are waiting for green cards. There will be a hearing Thursday afternoon.
“We have already seen that DHS’ arrest and detention tactics are traumatizing, and re-traumatizing, refugees who have often previously suffered and fled persecution, and who were resettled with the promise of refuge in the United States,” a press release from IRAP said. “IRAP condemns this new, unlawful policy that is based on a contorted reading of immigration law.”
IRAP said it will challenge the memo.
“This memo is part of a broad and concerted effort to strip refugees of their legal status and render them deportable,” said Laurie Ball Cooper, IRAP’s vice president of U.S. Legal Programs. “This government will clearly stop at nothing to terrorize refugee communities, and really all immigrants, while trampling over our constitutional rights.”
A USCIS spokesperson told CNN, “the media is sensationalizing long-established immigration law” and that the agency is “implementing the law as written by Congress,” citing a statute of US Code.
“Aliens, admitted as refugees are REQUIRED to be subject to a full inspection after a year within the United States. The statute expressly says that they shall ‘return or be returned to … custody,'” the spokesperson said via email. “This is not novel or discretionary; it is a clear requirement in law. The alternative would be to allow fugitive aliens to run rampant through our country with zero oversight. We refuse to let that happen.”
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