The Trump administration cannot terrorize

Feb 27 (Reuters) – A federal judge said on Friday he would not allow President Donald Trump’s administration to “terrorize” Minnesota’s 5,600 refugees by arresting and detaining them under a new policy that “turns the American refugee dream into a dystopian nightmare.”

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis made that statement while issuing a preliminary injunction extending an earlier temporary order that prevented the administration from arresting or detaining refugees on the basis that they had not yet obtained lawful permanent resident status, or a green card.

The administration had sought to do so under a policy adopted as part of “Operation PARRIS,” a program announced in January that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security billed as “a radical initiative” to re-examine thousands of refugee cases.

At the time, DHS said the initial focus of the initiative would be the approximately 5,600 refugees who had not yet received green cards in Minnesota, the site of a recent immigration surge operation and benefit fraud scandal.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Refugees from Africa, Asia and Latin America filed a class-action lawsuit, arguing that the Trump administration was wrongly claiming that immigration law gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the power to arrest any refugee who had not been granted a green card after a year in the United States.

Tunheim, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, agreed, saying the administration’s policy lacked congressional authorization, raised constitutional concerns and nullified the 1980 Refugee Act’s promise that refugees could be “given the opportunity for a new beginning in safety.”

via News

He noted that by law, refugees could not obtain green cards until one year had passed. However, he said the administration claimed the power to arrest them on the 366th day of their legal admission.

“The Court will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous legal 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,” Tunheim wrote.

It failed shortly after a group of refugees filed a similar but broader lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts to challenge the policy’s implementation nationwide.

Kimberly Grano, an attorney for the Minnesota plaintiffs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, praised the ruling in a statement, saying that “refugees can now live their lives without fear that their own government will snatch them off the streets and imprison them away from their loved ones.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in BostonEditing by Rod Nickel)