By Nate Raymond
Feb 27 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday said 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 refugees' American Dream into a dystopian nightmare."
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis made that statement as he issued a preliminary injunction that extended an earlier, temporary order that blocked the administration from arresting or detaining refugees on the basis that they had yet to obtain lawful permanent resident status, or green cards.
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 sweeping initiative" to reexamine thousands of refugee cases.
DHS at the time said the initial focus of the initiative would be the roughly 5,600 refugees who had yet to be given green cards in Minnesota, the site of a recent immigration enforcement surge operation and benefits fraud scandal.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
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Refugees from Africa, Asia and Latin America sued in a class-action lawsuit, arguing Trump's administration was wrongly asserting 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 authorization from Congress, raised constitutional concerns and upended the promise of the Refugee Act of 1980 that refugees could "be given a chance at a new beginning in safety."
He noted that by law, the refugees could not obtain green cards until a year had passed. Yet he said the administration was claiming the power to arrest them upon the 366th day of being lawfully admitted.
"The Court will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous statutory 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.
He ruled shortly after a group of refugees filed a similar but broader lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts seeking to challenge the policy's enforcement nationwide.
Kimberly Grano, a lawyer for the Minnesota plaintiffs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, in a statement hailed the ruling, saying the "refugees can now live their lives without fear that their own government will snatch them off the street and imprison them far from their loved ones."
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in BostonEditing by Rod Nickel)