A new directive from the Department of Homeland Security would turn a paperwork lapse into grounds for arrest and open-ended detention for many refugees who arrived under former President Biden. In a Wednesday memo, DHS rescinded 2010 guidance that said refugees who failed to apply for a green card after one year in the US shouldn't be detained on that basis alone, reports the Washington Post. The new policy, signed by acting ICE chief Todd Lyons and US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow, says that refugees can voluntarily turn themselves in for a new round of security interviews if they've passed that one-year deadline, "but if they don't ... ICE must find, arrest, and detain them," per CBS News.
Advocates estimate roughly 100,000 of the more than 200,000 refugees admitted during the Biden years could qualify for detention under the change, per the Post. The memo surfaced in a court filing before a Minnesota hearing in which a federal judge temporarily barred ICE from detaining about 5,600 refugees after arrests under "Operation PARRIS." As part of that effort, officers picked up resettled refugees from such nations as Somalia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, with some flown to Texas detention centers for questioning and then released without their identification paperwork, attorneys say.
The International Refugee Assistance Project and other groups are asking the court to invalidate the new policy, arguing that "custody" has historically meant notices and appointments, not arrest and indefinite lockup. The Post notes that the Trump administration is shifting refugee status to be conditional and tweaking a provision of existing immigration law to launch a mass "revetting" drive. DHS cites stats from an unpublished review involving 31,000 Western Hemisphere refugees in its decision, but it hasn't released the underlying data and didn't comment on the memo.
Critics warn the shift could pave the way for broader deportations and potential "refoulement"—returning people to the countries they fled—while upending what had been treated as a bureaucratic step in the resettlement process. "You don't invite people into the United States under one set of rules and start moving the goalposts after they arrive," says Shawn VanDiver, founder of the AfghanEvac nonprofit. The New Yorker has more on "how legal immigration became a deportation trap."
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