Judge blocks Trump officials from detaining refugees in Minnesota

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from detaining refugees in Minnesota, following a spate of arrests in the state.More than 100 refugees who had lawfully resettled in the state had been arrested in recent weeks, according to attorneys and advocacy groups. Some were flown to detention centers in Texas, according to attorneys representing the cases, and then were abruptly released – and left to find and pay their own way back home.On Wednesday, US district judge John R Tunheim ordered the administration to temporarily halt the arrest and detention of lawfully resettled refugees, while a lawsuit about the administration’s policy of “re-vetting” this population continued. The judge mandated the immediate release of all detained refugees in Minnesota and the release of those taken to Texas within five days.The ruling came after lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of refugees after the Trump administration announced its “Operation Parris” earlier this month, which it described as “a sweeping initiative re-examining thousands of refugee cases through new background checks and intensive verification of refugee claims”.According to the Department of Homeland Security, 5,600 refugees who had resettled in the US and had not yet become permanent residents would be subject to this vetting process.One of the plaintiffs in the case, referred to as D Doe, said he was at home with his family when a man in plain clothes knocked on his door and said that he had hit Doe’s car. When Doe went outside to check the damage, “he was surrounded by armed men and arrested”. He was detained first in Minnesota, and then flown to Texas, where he was “interrogated about his refugee status”, according to the filing. He was released in Texas and had to find his way back home.“I fled my home country because I was facing government repression,” said Doe. “I can’t believe it’s happening again here.”Doe’s wife, who is also a refugee, had been afraid to go outside since her husband’s arrest and had been staying with friends because she feared agents would return to her home.Such arrests had caused panic among Minnesota’s refugees, many of whom had already been weary to leave their homes or go to work because they feared being stopped and racially profiled by the thousands of immigration agents conducting aggressive immigration sweeps throughout the state.Before they are approved to come to the US, refugees undergo extensive vetting in a process that can take years. When they arrive in the US, they do so on flights coordinated with the government.“Operation Parris’s scheme of detaining lawfully present refugees is an unprecedented assault on core human rights that are enshrined in both the 1951 convention and the 1980 Refugee Act,” said Michele Garnett McKenzie, executive director of The Advocates for Human Rights, who praised the court’s decision.The homeland security department did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s queries regarding the ruling.One of the most challenging aspects of these detentions, McKenizie said, is that refugees were being detained and moved out of the state within days or hours – leaving their families scrambling to find them and get them legal aid. Because refugees had already been vetted and legally resettled, the vast majority of them did not have immigration attorneys, the attorney said.In more than one case, after a terrifying ordeal of being arrested, detained, and moved out of state, people were flown back and then released in Minnesota, she said, in at least one case in the middle of the night, without any prior notice given to their families.One client of hers was put on a plane from Texas, but was not told where he was being sent – leaving him with the impression that he was being deported back to his home country. He was surprised to find himself once again in Minnesota, she said.Another was released in Texas with “no belongings, no money, no papers”, she said.“The court finds that the threat of irreparable harm favors immediate relief in this case,” Tunheim said in his ruling on Wednesday. “The stories of terror and trauma recounted by named plaintiffs in their amended petition make this harm impossible to ignore.”