They had lived and worked in Minnesota for years, yet some were arrested on their way to religious services or a grocery store. A federal judge wrote that they were not committing crimes. So why were legal refugees being taken into custody at all?
Refugees Targeted in a Policy Shift
In a sealed case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, a group of refugees challenged a Trump administration policy that led to the arrest and detention of people who were already in the United States lawfully. According to reporting by Law&Crime, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began reexamining the status of roughly 5,600 refugees living in Minnesota as part of a broader immigration crackdown in the state.
A pseudonymous group of refugees first went to court with a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. They argued that DHS had no lawful authority to arrest and jail them solely because they had not yet completed the process of adjusting their refugee status to permanent residency. The Advocates for Human Rights, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, later joined the case and asked for a temporary restraining order, or TRO.
Most of the filings remain under seal, so the full scope of the government’s internal directives is not publicly visible. The outlines, however, emerged in U.S. District Judge John Tunheim’s written order granting temporary relief to the refugees.
What the Judge Actually Ordered
Judge Tunheim issued a 32-page memorandum opinion that barred the Trump administration from arresting and detaining legal refugees in Minnesota under the challenged policy. His order did more than freeze future arrests. It also required DHS to locate and free people already detained under the program.
In one of the clearest passages of the order, quoted by Law&Crime, Tunheim wrote, “They are not committing crimes on our streets, nor did they illegally cross the border. 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.”
Judge blocks Trump officials from detaining refugees in Minnesota
More than 100 refugees who had lawfully resettled in the state had been arrested in recent weeks, according to attorneys and advocacy groups. Some were flown to detention centers in Texashttps://t.co/MgiYVpz6zN pic.twitter.com/MfxMj0WJ5z
— EJW (@TedWilcox7) January 29, 2026
The judge directed DHS to “return and release” all refugees detained under the policy in Minnesota, including anyone first arrested in the state but then transported to a facility elsewhere. The order also set tight compliance deadlines. Within 48 hours, DHS had to file under seal a list identifying every detained refugee covered by the policy and the location of each person’s detention. Within seven days, the government had to file a public status update on the release of those detainees.
Those requirements gave the court an immediate oversight role. They also forced DHS to account, in writing, for how many people had been held and where.
The Legal Fight Over a Single Word
The core dispute centered on how to read one provision of federal immigration law, 8 U.S.C. 1159. That statute addresses how refugees may adjust their status to become lawful permanent residents, usually after one year in the country.
The Trump administration argued that this section allowed DHS to place refugees in mandatory detention after that one year mark. Government lawyers focused on a phrase that refugees who have not yet adjusted “return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination.” In the administration’s reading, being “returned to the custody” of DHS meant the agency could hold refugees as detainees while it inspected and examined their cases.
Judge Tunheim rejected that view. In his order, he concluded that the provision does not give DHS authority to jail people for prolonged periods solely because they are waiting for an adjustment decision. He wrote that the “custody” language is about enabling inspection and examination, not about open-ended detention. The opinion cited DHS’s own guidance, which describes this type of processing as taking roughly 48 hours, not weeks or months.
The judge also analyzed what the government’s reading would mean in practice. If “be returned to the custody” required detention, then every refugee in the United States would face jail around the one-year anniversary of arrival unless USCIS happened to process the case at exactly that time. The order described that outcome as “illogical” and “nonsensical,” noting that it would effectively turn a routine legal anniversary into a basis for incarceration.
Claims of Unlawful Detention
The refugees’ 53-page complaint relied in part on the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing that DHS had changed how it interpreted the law without following required rulemaking steps. Judge Tunheim’s order, however, leaned heavily on the Immigration and Nationality Act itself. He concluded that the refugees had shown a “likelihood of success” on their claim that DHS lacked statutory authority to detain them under the provisions the government cited.
According to the portion of the complaint described in open court and summarized by Law&Crime, several refugees in Minnesota had already been detained under the policy despite this lack of clear authority. They had not been charged with any ground of removability. Nor had they been accused of criminal conduct. Their legal status as refugees was not in dispute. The central issue was whether DHS could use the adjustment process as a reason to jail them.
In granting the TRO, the judge did not issue a final ruling on the government’s long-term powers. Instead, he determined that the plaintiffs had met the standard for temporary relief. They showed a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, a risk of irreparable harm, and a public interest in preventing unlawful detention while the case proceeds.
What the Order Means on the Ground
The immediate human impact is straightforward. Refugees who had been living openly in Minnesota, working and raising families, were arrested and held in immigration detention based solely on the new policy. Judge Tunheim’s order required DHS to locate each of them and release them from custody, unless the agency could point to some separate lawful basis to hold them.
The order did not cancel the federal government’s power to vet refugees or to deny adjustment in individual cases. DHS still retains authority to inspect and examine applications for permanent status, and to take action against people who are actually subject to removal under the immigration laws. What the judge rejected was the idea that a pending adjustment application, by itself, allows the government to place a class of lawful refugees into prolonged detention.
Because most of the filings remain sealed, the exact number of people detained and the full criteria used to target them are not part of the public record. The compliance reports that DHS was ordered to file may eventually provide more detail. At a minimum, they will show how many people the government acknowledges detaining under the disputed interpretation of 1159 and how quickly those individuals were released after the TRO.
Civil Liberties Framing From the Bench
Beyond statutory interpretation, Tunheim’s opinion framed the case in terms of fundamental civil liberties. He wrote, “At its best, America serves as a haven of individual liberties in a world too often full of tyranny and cruelty. We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos.”
That language underscored what the court saw as the stakes for people who had passed the government’s refugee screening and were living lawfully in the United States. In the judge’s view, they were not surreptitious border crossers or individuals with outstanding criminal charges. They were neighbors suddenly facing arrest in ordinary spaces, including homes, workplaces, and places of worship.
The order left open what would happen when the case moved past the temporary stage. The government could appeal, argue for a different reading of the statute, or attempt to justify detention under other provisions of immigration law. For now, the key question is whether a program that began largely out of public view will fully unwind, and how many refugees in Minnesota will have to rebuild their lives after a period of confinement that a federal court has said the law does not clearly permit.
