The Division of Place of origin Safety issued a coverage memo in February 2026 that would result in the detention of refugees who’re legally within the nation.
The brand new coverage states that “DHS may arrest and detain a refugee who has lived in the United States for at least one year and has not yet acquired” lawful everlasting resident standing. Roughly 100,000 refugees may well be in peril for such arrest and detention.
The coverage rescinds a 2010 DHS coverage that restricted the company’s skill to arrest refugees. The 2010 coverage was once cited in a 2026 court docket order that quickly prohibited brokers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting refugees in Minnesota so to root out instances of fraud within the refugee admissions procedure.
As an immigration student, I imagine the brand new DHS memo constitutes a large departure from earlier coverage – one that would end result within the detention of 1000’s of people that have lawful immigration standing.
To raised perceive the brand new DHS coverage and the trade it represents, it’s useful to explain what it way to be a refugee.
Refugees flee persecution
Refugees flee their international locations to flee persecution because of their race, faith, nationality or political opinion. Beneath U.S. immigration regulation, a refugee is somebody who arrived within the U.S. via an reliable U.S. resettlement procedure.
After registering as a refugee in a foreign country, the method for being resettled within the U.S. can take years – from time to time many years – and calls for rigorous background assessments.
Upon arrival, refugees are authorized to are living and paintings indefinitely within the U.S. They’re additionally eligible to “adjust” their immigration standing to lawful everlasting resident, sometimes called a “green card,” after twelve months within the nation.
At factor with the brand new DHS coverage is the translation of Segment 209 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the statute that governs refugee changes and strikes them from refugee standing to lawful everlasting resident.
Segment 209 states that refugees who’ve been bodily provide within the U.S. for twelve months and haven’t but won lawful everlasting resident standing “shall, at the end of such year period, return or be returned to the custody of DHS for inspection and admission” as a lawful everlasting resident.
Traditionally, this has supposed that refugees are required to go through a secondary screening, via an interview or paper utility, ahead of receiving their inexperienced playing cards.
Vietnamese evacuees fill a touchdown craft, assisted via U.S. Marines, on Would possibly 4, 1975. Greater than 125,000 refugees from Vietnam have been resettled within the U.S. between 1975 and 1980.
AP Picture/Neal Ulevich
However DHS is now deciphering the language in Segment 209 to impose an obligation on refugees to voluntarily go back to DHS custody – which it defines as detention – after twelve months within the nation. That is even if refugees aren’t even eligible for felony everlasting resident standing till they have got been within the nation for a complete yr, placing refugees in an not possible scenario.
Necessarily, each refugee may face imprisonment until immigration officers evaluate and approve their inexperienced card programs at precisely the one-year mark.
Historical past of refugee coverage
The language in Segment 209 arose after the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, a regulation that created our present refugee resettlement framework. Previous to this, there was once no mounted felony mechanism for resettling refugees within the U.S.
As a substitute, the federal government answered to humanitarian crises in large part on an advert hoc foundation. It quickly allowed folks into the U.S. from Vietnam and Cuba.
As soon as right here, the ones folks had no long-term felony standing until Congress controlled to move after-the-fact regulation authorizing them to use for inexperienced playing cards, because it did for Cubans with the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.
The Refugee Act of 1980 was once supposed to resolve this drawback. It established a felony mechanism for refugee resettlement. It created a brand new refugee immigration standing and ensured that refugees are eligible for everlasting residency.
The earliest laws enforcing Segment 209 display the “returned to custody” language was once happy via attending an interview at a neighborhood immigration place of business. It was once a part of the golf green card procedure that was once in the end changed with a paper utility.
The laws enforcing that modify state that the “‘custody’ requirement for refugees applying for adjustment of status” can also be met via submitting an utility.
What the DHS memo way for refugees
So, what most often occurs if a refugee fails to post their utility?
In most cases, not anything.
Till fairly lately, refugees weren’t even authorized to record for lawful everlasting place of abode till after residing within the nation for a yr.
Earlier ICE steering identified that although a refugee fails to record a inexperienced card utility in any respect, they nonetheless care for their lawful refugee immigration standing. The failure to post an utility didn’t create any foundation to deport a refugee. Subsequently, absent different elements, immigration detention was once beside the point.
A Syrian refugee and his circle of relatives store for groceries in El Cajon, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2016.
AP Picture/Lenny Ignelzi
What’s going to refugees do now?
Immigration lawyers are advising their refugee purchasers to record for lawful everlasting standing straight away, if they have got no longer but carried out so, to cut back the danger of detention. However that is probably not sufficient.
The DHS memo states {that a} refugee “may be considered to have voluntarily returned to custody” in the event that they filed their utility and complied with any interviews. However the wording of the memo leaves open the door to detain someone who has no longer but had their utility authorized.
This ends up in every other factor, which is DHS administrative delays. The federal government lately takes roughly one year to approve refugee inexperienced card programs for requests it’s keen to procedure.
In January 2026, every other DHS coverage put an indefinite cling on all programs for people from an inventory of 39 international locations. In consequence, programs for refugees from international locations together with Haiti, Afghanistan and Republic of the Congo aren’t being reviewed in any respect.
Because of this refugees who’ve carried out the whole lot proper may well be imprisoned indefinitely below this coverage, since the U.S. executive is refusing to pass judgement on their programs.
By contrast backdrop, the Trump management has capped refugee admissions for 2026 to a report low of seven,500.
No less than one federal lawsuit has already been filed to problem this new coverage.
What occurs now will depend on how a long way DHS is keen to head and whether or not the courts permit it to take action.
