Jane Wolfe
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s recently announced policy for the approximately 5,600 legal refugees in Minnesota who are waiting for green cards.
In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis said federal agents may have violated multiple federal regulations by arresting some of the refugees to subject them to additional scrutiny.
“At its best, the United States serves as a haven of individual freedom in a world often filled with tyranny and cruelty,” Tunheim wrote. “We abandon that ideal when we plunge our neighbors into fear and chaos.”
Tunheim issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from arresting legal refugees in Minnesota who have not yet been charged with violating immigration laws. The judge said the ruling will remain in effect until he hears more legal arguments from civil rights groups challenging the policy.
The Trump administration began sending thousands of immigration agents to Minneapolis and St. Paul in December in what officials said was an effort to enforce immigration laws and stop fraud.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, criticized Tunheim’s ruling in X, saying: “There is no end to the judicial undermining of democracy.”
The order is a major setback for Operation Paris, a program announced by the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month and billed as “a sweeping initiative to reexamine thousands of refugee cases with new background checks.”
Tunheim said his order will not affect the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to re-examine refugee applicants and “will not affect the Department of Homeland Security’s lawful enforcement of immigration laws.”
Tunheim said the refugees affected by his order were carefully vetted people who “have the right not to suffer the fear of being arrested and detained without a warrant or reason.”
Kimberly Grano, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, which is involved in the lawsuit, said in a press release that the order would put in place “desperately needed guardrails” for federal agents.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Tom Hogue)
