The Trump administration has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers broader powers to detain lawful refugees who have yet to secure permanent U.S. residency, in its latest effort to more heavily scrutinize immigrants, illegal and legal alike, according to a government memo issued Wednesday and obtained by CBS News
The directive, dated Feb. 18 and submitted by government lawyers in a federal court filing on Wednesday, instructs ICE to detain refugees who entered the U.S. lawfully but who have not formally obtained permanent residency — also known as green card — a year after their admission.
Refugees are immigrants granted a safe haven in the U.S. after proving they are fleeing persecution in their home countries due to their race, religion, nationality, political views or membership in a social group.
Historically, the U.S. has resettled tens of thousands of refugees annually, most of whom undergo a years-long vetting process in refugee camps overseas before reaching American soil. But the Trump administration has virtually shut down the U.S. refugee program, making limited exemptions for some groups, including Afrikaners whom officials have claimed are escaping racial oppression in South Africa because they are White.
The latest policy targets refugees already brought to the U.S. Under federal law, refugees can apply for a green card a year after their arrival.
Through the new memo, the Trump administration is arguing that those refugees who have not become permanent U.S. residents a year after coming to the country must return to government custody to have their cases reviewed and re-screened. The directive was issued by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow, who, among other things, oversees the green card process.
The memo says these refugees can return to government custody voluntarily by appearing for an interview at an immigration office. But if they don’t, the memo says, ICE must find, arrest and detain them.
“[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 designed to determine whether refugees obtained their refugee 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.
The directive reverses longstanding ICE policy that stipulated that refugees’ failure to get a green card within a year of their admission was not, by itself, a legitimate legal reason to detain them. The prior policy also required ICE to decide, within 48 hours of detaining a refugee, to release them or place them in deportation proceedings if officials found any valid deportation grounds.
The Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to reopen and reexamine the immigration cases of people who were previously granted legal status in the United States. In November, the administration directed immigration officials to review the cases of refugees admitted under former President Joe Biden, potentially reinterviewing them in some cases to determine whether they meet the legal definition of a refugee, CBS News previously reported.
While its crackdown on illegal immigration has garnered more attention and controversy, the Trump administration has mounted a quieter, yet still sweeping effort to tighten legal immigration channels, usually justifying the moves on national security grounds.
After the Thanksgiving week shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. — allegedly at the hands of an Afghan national — USCIS has paused all legal immigration applications filed by immigrants from dozens of countries identified as “high risk.”
Late last year, the Trump administration launched an effort, dubbed Operation PARRIS, to reexamine the cases of thousands of refugees in Minnesota. The move coincided with the deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis region. Lawyers reported cases of refugees detained in Minnesota being flown to Texas to be held and questioned there, before a federal judge curtailed the operation.
The administration argues its efforts are designed to mitigate national security and public safety concerns involving some refugees. Advocates for immigrants say the campaign is punishing people who came to the U.S. legally, after fleeing warzones and violence, on dubious security or fraud allegations and questionable legal grounds.
“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,” said Beth Oppenheim, the CEO of HIAS, a humanitarian group that helps resettle refugees and is challenging the Trump administration’s effort to detain some refugees.