The Department of Homeland Security is expanding ICE’s authority to detain legal refugees who do not have green cards citing national security concerns.
According to a Feb. 18 memo from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, refugees must obtain a green card within a year or “present themselves to the agency” to avoid being detained.
This is yet another method by which the Trump administration is attempting to limit legal resettlement in the United States. This move comes after the administration set the lowest cap in history for those it would admit into the U.S.
USCIS also announced that it would re-review the status of those who entered the U.S. as a refugee under the Biden administration. Reopening those cases could lead to losing legal refugee status.
“This policy is a transparent effort to detain and potentially deport thousands of people who are legally present in the this country, people the U.S. government itself welcomed after years of extreme vetting,” said Beth Oppenheim, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. HAIS is an international Jewish nonprofit organization that provides services to refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced people. “They were promised safety and the chance to rebuild their lives. Instead, DHS is now threatening them with arrest and indefinite detention,” she added.
The new policy invalidates prior guidance that did not make failure to apply for a green card a reason for deportation. The new directive also allows individuals to be placed in detention while their application for a green card is processed.
Officials at the agency claim that the new guidelines will prevent fraud and identify threats to national security.
“This detain-and-inspect requirement ensure that refugees are re-vetted after one year, aligns post-admission vetting with that applied to other applicants for admission, and promotes public safety,” according to the memo.
In Trump’s first year, he cut funding to organizations that help refugees resettle in the United States. Those organizations now expect the new policy to impact tens of thousands of refugees due to delays in USCIS processing under the one-year green card rule.
