On a chilly winter day in Minnesota, a mother of four was nursing her 5-month-old infant when someone knocked on the door. She answered, and in walked ICE immigration agents. Te Eh Doh Lah, a refugee from Myanmar (formerly Burma), had come legally to the United States with her husband and children in 2024. They belonged to a persecuted Christian minority known as the Karen people in Myanmar. Ms. Lah had no reason to fear ICE, as she had already passed rigorous vetting and background checks to come to the U.S. As required by immigration law, she had dutifully followed all the rules, including applying for permanent residence status (a green card) a year after arriving.
What should have been a quick check-in, turned into a mother’s worst nightmare. ICE tore Ms. Lah from her baby, shackled her, and shipped her 1,800 miles away from her children to a cold, dank detention center in Texas. She committed no crimes. She broke no laws. She did everything the right and legal way.
A federal judge later called Ms. Lah’s detention unlawful and noted that she had already lost important bonding and nursing time with her baby. “There is something particularly craven about transferring a nursing refugee mother out-of-state,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Shannon G. Elkins during a January 19, 2026 hearing on Ms. Lah’s case.
Under new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) guidelines, legally admitted refugees living in the U.S., like Ms. Lah, face arrest, indefinite detention, and possible expulsion back to the very places they fled.
When refugees come to America, after years of waiting and intense screening, we make them a promise. We tell them that after a year, if they follow all the rules, they can become lawful residents and receive their green cards. We promise them safety, security, and sanctuary. Instead, they now find themselves shackled, thrown into prison warehouses without due process, and made to relive the fear they escaped from. This is a betrayal of the promise of America and all that the United States has stood for and come to represent in our 250 years of existence.
“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. 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.”
- Excerpt from Judge Tunheim’s TRO ruling in UHA v. Bondi
The U.S. government is arresting and detaining refugees who entered the country legally, passed rigorous security vetting, and have every right to be here. The Trump Administration is seeking to change U.S. refugee policy that has been in place for decades, upending thousands of lives, and putting the lives of refugees who lawfully came to the U.S. in danger if they are sent back to their home countries.
President Trump, on his first day in office, closed the United States to most refugees from around the world. He also suspended the processing of green card applications for most refugees already in the U.S., including those with pending applications.
DHS then asserted the right to retroactively re-examine the status of refugees admitted under the Biden administration, claiming mass fraud in the refugee system and that refugees posed a danger to U.S. safety and security.
The first test case of DHS’s new policy came with the January 9, 2026 launch of Operation PARRIS, which targeted the 5,600 refugees living in Minnesota who had not yet received their green cards. Ms. Lah and approximately 150 other refugees were swept up in Operation PARRIS. None of the refugees targeted were here illegally, deemed a danger to the community, or a flight risk.
In response, several refugees—represented by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Berger Montague, the Advocates for Human Rights, and the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law—filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump Administration to stop Operation PARRIS.
On January 28, Minnesota District Judge John Tunheim sided with the plaintiffs and issued a temporary restraining order (TRO), blocking immigration officers from arresting and detaining recently resettled refugees in the state, and ordered the release and return of the refugees, like Ms. Lah, who were sent to detention centers in Texas.
In response, on February 18, DHS filed a new memorandum authorizing immigration agents to arrest and detain lawfully-admitted refugees indefinitely if they have not yet received their green cards (this is known legally as “adjusting their status”).
With these new policies, the administration created a bureaucratic trap for refugees. It’s now exploiting that trap. The government froze the green card process, making it impossible for refugees to adjust their status. Now the government is targeting refugees because they have not yet adjusted their status.
This is a classic Catch-22, leaving refugees who have lawfully been in the U.S. for the past 18 months or less in a state of limbo and fear.
Furthermore, the DHS memo outlining the government’s new arrest and detention policy for unadjusted refugees is only one part of this administration’s broader strategy to strip refugees of their status at will. They have made additional moves to expand their authority to remove refugees from the U.S., and restrict the ability of refugees to appeal the government’s decisions.
- 5,600 — refugees initially targeted under Operation PARRIS in Minnesota
- 100+ — refugees arrested in Minnesota since January 9
1,800 miles — distance many refugees were transferred to Texas detention facilities, often within 24 hours, before attorneys could file petitions
1980 — the year President Jimmy Carter signed the U.S. Refugee Act into law
2010 — the year the Chaparro Memo was issued, establishing that unadjusted status alone cannot justify detention of refugees. New DHS memo rescinded the Chaparro Memo.
100,000 — unadjusted refugees nationwide
200,000+ — Biden-era refugees subject to USCIS re-review nationwide
38 — countries whose nationals are subject to Trump’s travel ban, which froze their green card processing
$75 billion — funding ICE received in 2025
Over 3 million — total number of refugees admitted into the U.S. since 1980
Under Operation PARRIS, ICE officers arrested, detained, and sent to a holding facility in Texas between 100-150 refugees who were lawfully resettled in the U.S., including mothers like Ms. Lah, children, and the elderly.
Selamawit Mehari is a single mother of three from Eritrea. She came to the U.S. as a refugee in 2023, and was awaiting word on her application for a green card. On January 13, immigration agents showed up at her apartment in St. Paul, handcuffed her in front of her frightened children, and took her away. A day later, she was chained at the wrists, waist, and ankles and put on a plane to Texas. She was locked in a cold room with other women, clothed in prison garb, and underwent intense questioning for hours.
Without warning, on January 17, she was released onto the streets of Texas alongside several other refugees, without money or identification. Her daughter had to arrange for an acquaintance to buy Ms. Mehari a plane ticket back to Minneapolis.
Later that day, the family received word that Ms. Mehari’s green card was approved.
Walid Ali, also from Eritrea, is a 19-year-old refugee who was resettled in the U.S. under the unaccompanied refugee minor program. ICE agents arrested him outside his home on January 13, and quickly shipped him off to a Texas holding facility. Officers took Mr. Ali’s wallet, phone, and ID. When he protested his belongings being confiscated, he was pushed to the ground, knelt on, and beaten.
Like Ms. Mehari, Mr. Ali was suddenly released and left on the streets of Houston without his belongings, forced to find his own way home. His friends and family paid for a flight back to Minnesota from Texas.
“I fled my home country because I was facing government repression. I can’t believe it’s happening again here. It’s chilling and I’m scared.”
- D. Doe, Refugee Plaintiff, UHA v. Bondi
U.S. immigration law requires that once a refugee has been in the U.S. for a full year, they must apply for permanent residency; however, if they did not apply to adjust their status right away, this was not legal cause to arrest or detain them. Until now.
The law did allow for them to be temporarily detained for up to 48-hours if deemed necessary to conduct investigations or interviews, but that was uncommon and they certainly weren’t shipped to detention centers several states away.
All refugees are highly vetted prior to being admitted to the U.S. Because of this, only under rare cases would their refugee status be re-examined: usually for suspicion of criminal activity, national security concerns, or evidence that a refugee had lied on their application.
Refugees sometimes delay applying for permanent residency because they can’t afford it or encounter challenges with red tape. However, in the past they were not subjected to arrest or detention if they failed to apply for their green card in a timely manner.
Now, with the new DHS memo, refugees who do not have a green card can be detained on their 366th day in the U.S.
“Refugees spend years being cleared. They have dozens of interviews, security checks, background checks, and medical exams. When they are accepted for resettlement in the United States, it’s like a miracle.”
– Kimberly Grano, Litigation Staff Attorney at IRAP
DHS claims it launched Operation PARRIS in Minnesota because of a massive scheme that defrauded Minnesota’s taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Some in the Somali community in Minnesota were involved, and DHS used that as a justification to target all immigrants and refugees.
According to the NYTimes, during the COVID-19 pandemic, scores of people stole hundreds of millions of dollars from Minnesota’s social safety net programs. Some of the fraud was committed by members of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, where individuals set up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services… services that were never provided.
To date, 59 people have been convicted and around 100 have been charged. Most are of Somali ancestry; however, the vast majority of those are American citizens by birth or naturalization. The Somali-American community in Minnesota is 80,000. That means that only 0.125%, or one-eighth of one percent, of Minnesotan Somalis were found to be complicit in the scheme.
Yet this fraud case is being used by the Trump Administration to justify the reexamination of all refugee applications in Minnesota, and now the entire country.
Operation PARRIS is currently frozen in Minnesota due to a federal court order. Following the lawsuit filed by refugee advocacy groups, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on January 28, 2026, halting DHS and ICE from arresting and detaining legally admitted refugees in Minnesota under the program.
A month later, on February 27, Judge Tunheim granted an a motion by the plaintiff’s to convert the TRO into a more permanent preliminary injunction while the case works its way through the courts. He also rebuked DHS’s new national policy on refugees:
"This Court will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous statutory interpretation to terrorize refugees who immigrated to this country under the promise that they would be welcomed and allowed to live in peace, far from the persecution they fled… We promised them the hope that one day they could achieve the American Dream… The Government's new policy breaks that promise — without congressional authorization — and raises serious constitutional concerns. The new policy turns the refugees' American Dream into a dystopian nightmare."
- U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, February 27, 2026
The order applies only in Minnesota.
Separately, but relatedly, on January 21, 2026, DHS asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to override decades of Board of Immigration guidance on how to view refugees currently in the U.S. and instead treat refugees, after one year, as if they are reapplying for admission. If adopted, that shift would subject refugees to broader and easier grounds for removal.
No word on when the Attorney General is expected to make a decision.
*If you are a refugee living in the United States, please visit the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) online, where you can find out more about the administration’s new policies on re-vetting and detention, what they mean for you, and what you should do if you are detained by ICE.