Minnesota refugees receive status termination notices as federal review widens

Refugees across the Twin Cities are receiving Notices of Intent to Terminate Refugee Status under Operation PARRIS, a Department of Homeland Security operation announced in January that claims to target fraud among legal refugees, Sahan Journal reported. The notices expose recipients to deportation and funnel them into an asylum system burdened by severe backlogs.

In the operation's early phase, federal officials detained refugees appearing for in-person interviews and transferred them to detention centers in Texas. Court rulings in late January and February halted the detentions, but re-vetting interviews continued across Minnesota, often on no more than 48 hours' notice and lasting up to eight hours, probing discrepancies with interviews given years earlier, according to Laurie Ball Cooper of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Ball Cooper said many notices never reach recipients, delivered "in strange ways" including to landlord offices. The response window was previously 30 days, but an interim DHS rule posted Wednesday cut it to 10, citing the need to "mitigate risks to national security" and "prevent fraud and exploitation."

The new rule "makes it impossible to respond to the notices in time," said Rachel Kohler, supervising attorney at the International Institute of Minnesota, because attorneys must first file Freedom of Information Act requests that will not return in time, while the records that do come back are heavily redacted.

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in a statement that the agency "has found an alarming erosion of screening and vetting measures under the Biden Administration," and that the rule lets it "move promptly and efficiently" to terminate the status of anyone found not to have met the refugee definition at admission.

Among those affected is "Kamal," an Ethiopian refugee admitted legally in 2022 after nearly a decade of vetting, who missed an interview after notices went to a mailbox he rarely checks; USCIS then told him it was terminating his refugee status. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States.