DHS memo lets ICE detain lawfully admitted refugees for aggressive rescreening

The Trump administration is moving to turn “rescreening” into a pretext for indefinite detention — even for refugees who were lawfully admitted to the United States.

According to The Guardian, citing a new Department of Homeland Security memo first reported by The Washington Post and also obtained by CNN, DHS is directing immigration officers to arrest refugees who have not yet become lawful permanent residents and hold them while their cases are re-examined. The memo frames refugee admission as “conditional” and asserts a “mandatory review after one year,” explicitly authorizing detention “for the duration of the inspection and examination process.” In plain English: the state can lock you up first and decide later.

The memo reverses Obama-era guidance from 2010 that said failing to apply for a green card within one year was not, by itself, sufficient grounds for arrest or detention, The Guardian reports. The new posture is already entangled with litigation in Minnesota, where a federal judge, John Tunheim, recently blocked further arrests and ordered the release of at least 100 refugees detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That case centers on what officials call “Operation Parris,” a program targeting roughly 5,600 refugees in Minnesota who had not yet adjusted status. DHS describes the initiative as a “sweeping” re-check of refugee cases using new background checks and more aggressive verification — a bureaucratic rerun of the same story refugees already told to get in.

Tunheim’s order, quoted by The Guardian, was unusually blunt: refugees have a legal right to be in the United States and “to live peacefully.” DHS’s memo, issued anyway, reads like a dare to the judiciary: it claims prior guidance was “incomplete” and that arrests are compelled.

This has played out before. When the state wants a power it can’t justify in court, it doesn’t always need a new statute; it needs a new workflow. Detention becomes a policy instrument, not a last resort. The process itself becomes the punishment: confinement, repeated interviews, paperwork battles, and the practical impossibility of working or maintaining a life while in custody.

The Guardian notes reporting that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to spend $38.3 billion to buy and retrofit warehouses into detention centers — a tidy industrial policy for the incarceration supply chain.

Meanwhile, public support for the crackdown is wobbling. A Quinnipiac poll cited by The Guardian puts Trump’s immigration approval at 38% in February, down from 44% in December. Perhaps voters are discovering that “law and order” is often just “order,” with the law stapled on afterward.

DHS did not immediately respond to The Guardian’s request for comment.