U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns on Monday issued a temporary order preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining refugees who have not yet obtained green cards within their first year in the country, Axios reported.
The order blocks enforcement of an administration policy, drafted in December and disclosed publicly last month, that authorized returning refugees to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security if they had not secured lawful permanent residency within that timeframe. The International Institute of New England, a resettlement nonprofit, and four individual refugees filed the lawsuit challenging the policy earlier this month, according to Axios.
Jeff Thielman, CEO of the International Institute of New England, told Axios that the ruling was a significant development for his organization’s clients. “It gives us some relief and a break, really, from this pressure that we’ve all been feeling, that our clients are going to be arrested and detained indefinitely,” Thielman said.
The legal dispute centered on the language of the December directive. The policy stated that refugees could “return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination for admission to the United States as an immigrant,” Axios reported. Attorneys for the nonprofit argued that the directive improperly treated custody and detention as the same thing. Judge Stearns accepted that argument, Axios reported. He further noted that refugees are not placed in detention upon their arrival in the United States, meaning they cannot be “returned” to a status they never held.
The ruling also highlighted a contradiction in the green card application timeline. Thielman told Axios that prior to this year, refugees were instructed to begin their permanent residency applications at the one-year mark after arrival, and that applications filed before that deadline were routinely denied. The December policy effectively created detention consequences for refugees who had not completed a process the government had previously told them not to start early.
The refugees named in the lawsuit entered the United States through the federal refugee admissions program, which requires extensive security vetting before arrival. They were authorized to apply for permanent residency after one year of legal presence in the country.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Axios’ request for comment on the ruling.
The order is temporary. Further proceedings in the case will determine whether the block becomes permanent.
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