President Donald Trump speaks in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
The Trump administration is barred from arresting and detaining legal refugees in Minnesota, a federal district court has ruled.
Earlier this year, amid a widespread immigration crackdown in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — along with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — began an effort aimed at targeting and reexamining the legal status of some 5,600 refugees living in the state.
On Jan. 18, a pseudonymous group of refugees sued over the policy in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Last week, the plaintiffs were joined by The Advocates for Human Rights, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, and they moved for a temporary restraining order (TRO).
To date, most of the filings in the case are under seal.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, a Bill Clinton appointee, revealed some details in a thundering 32-page memorandum opinion and order granting the plaintiffs a TRO.
"They are not committing crimes on our streets, nor did they illegally cross the border," the order reads. "Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully — and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries."
In ruling against the government, the judge preliminarily accepted several of the plaintiffs' legal arguments — particularly the claim that "federal statutes governing refugees and immigrant detention do not permit prolonged detention of unadjusted refugees who have not been charged with any ground of removability."
While the crux of the 53-page complaint is the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Tunheim atypically relies on a claim under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to enjoin DHS and USCIS.
In the case, the Trump administration argued a section of the INA — 8 U.S.C. § 1159 — gives DHS the power to subject refugees to mandatory detention. The government cites language which provides that, after one year in the country, refugees who have not had their statuses adjusted must "return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination."
To hear the court tell it, the decision is something of an easy call because the statute contains no such detention authority.
Rather, the court says, the "custody" language is simply — and only — about inspection and examination. And this process, the court notes, citing DHS guidance, should take roughly 48 hours.
"Because 8 U.S.C. § 1159 does not authorize prolonged detention of unadjusted refugees, and because the Named Plaintiffs, the putative Class, and the putative Detained Subclass are not subject to detention under [several other statutes], Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on their claim that Defendants lack lawful authority to detain them," the order goes on. "Section 1159 permits the inspection and examination necessary to adjudicate refugees' adjustment of status applications — nothing more."
The court goes on to severely rubbish the government's interpretation of the "custody" phrase, at length (emphasis in original):
[I]nterpreting the phrase "be returned to the custody" in § 1159(a) as mandating detention would lead to an illogical result. Because § 1159(a) makes refugees ineligible for adjustment until one year after entry, Defendants' interpretation would subject every refugee to detention, unless USCIS conducted the inspection and examination precisely at the one-year mark. That outcome is nonsensical and would cause many unadjusted refugees to celebrate their one-year anniversary in this country in a jail cell.
Still, despite the lack of such authority, the complaint notes that several legal refugees have been detained under the new policy.
The court's order offers relief to those detainees by directing DHS to immediately "return and release" all "those refugees who are presently detained under the policy" in Minnesota — and any refugees who were originally detained in the state but transported elsewhere.
The order also contains a series of tight compliance deadlines:
Within 7 days of this Order, Defendants shall file on the docket a status update concerning the status of the Detained Subclass members' release.Within 48 hours of this Order, Defendants shall produce and file under seal a list of individuals in detention that satisfy that definition of the putative Detained Subclass, as set forth in Paragraph 3 of this Order. The list must disclose the individuals' identities and their location of detention.
"At its best, America serves as a haven of individual liberties in a world too often full of tyranny and cruelty," Tunheim intones. "We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos."