Judge blocks Trump officials from detaining refugees in Minnesota | Minnesota

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from detaining refugees in Minnesota, following a wave of arrests in the state.

More than 100 refugees legally resettled in the state have been arrested in recent weeks, according to lawyers and advocacy groups. Some were flown to detention centers in Texas, according to lawyers representing the cases, then abruptly released — and left to find and pay their own way home.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim ordered the administration to temporarily suspend the arrest and detention of legally resettled refugees while a lawsuit over the administration’s policy of “rescreening” this population continued. The judge ordered the immediate release of all refugees detained in Minnesota and the release of those taken to Texas within five days.

The decision 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 vetting of asylum claims.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security, 5,600 refugees resettled in the United States who have not yet become permanent residents would be subject to this screening process.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, named D Doe, said he was at home with his family when a man in plain clothes knocked on his door and said he had hit Doe’s car. When Doe went out to see the damage, “he was surrounded by armed men and arrested.” He was first detained in Minnesota, then flown to Texas, where he was “questioned about his refugee status,” according to the filing. He was released in Texas and had to find his way home.

“I fled my home country because I faced government repression,” Doe said. “I can’t believe this is happening again here.”

Doe’s wife, who is also a refugee, had been afraid to go out since her husband’s arrest and was staying with friends because she feared agents would return to her home.

Such arrests caused panic among Minnesota refugees, many of whom were already tired of leaving their homes or going to work because they feared arrest and racial profiling by the thousands of immigration agents conducting aggressive immigration operations throughout the state.

Before being allowed to come to the United States, refugees undergo extensive screening, a process that can take years. When they arrive in the United States, they do so on flights coordinated with the government.

“Operation Parris’s plan to detain legally present refugees constitutes an unprecedented attack on basic human rights enshrined in both the 1951 convention and the 1980 Refugee Act,” said Michele Garnett McKenzie, executive director of The Advocates for Human Rights, who welcomed the court’s decision.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to questions from the Guardian about the decision.

One of the most difficult aspects of these detentions, McKenizie said, is that refugees were detained and moved out of state within days or hours, leaving their families scrambling to find them and get them legal help. Because the refugees had already been vetted and legally resettled, the vast majority of them did not have immigration attorneys, the lawyer said.

In more than one case, after a terrifying ordeal of arrest, detention and movement out of state, people were flown back and then released back to Minnesota, she said, in at least one case in the middle of the night, with no notice given to their families.

One of his clients was put on a plane from Texas, but he was not told where he was being sent – ​​leaving him feeling like he was being deported back to his home country. He was surprised to find himself in Minnesota again, she said.

Another was released in Texas “with no personal effects, no money, no papers,” she said.

“The court finds that the threat of irreparable harm argues for immediate relief in this case,” Tunheim said in Wednesday’s ruling. “The stories of terror and trauma told by the plaintiffs cited in their amended motion make this harm impossible to ignore. »