Judge blocks DHS from detaining refugees who lack green cards

Refugees admitted to the United States go through a separate legal process from asylum seekers or undocumented immigrants. They are screened and vetted overseas by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and multiple U.S. agencies before arriving, then formally admitted under the Refugee Act of 1980. That law grants them protected legal status and requires them to apply for lawful permanent resident status, a green card, after one year in the country. Immigration authorities have historically recognized that USCIS processing backlogs mean many refugees have pending applications but haven't yet received a final decision or even an interview date.

Operation PARRIS reinterpreted that one-year application requirement as a mandatory trigger for arrest and detention. Under the DHS policy, any refugee who had been in the United States for more than 12 months without an approved green card was subject to warrantless arrest and indefinite detention, regardless of whether they had a pending application or were waiting for a USCIS interview.

DHS named the program Operation PARRIS, which stands for Post-Admission Refugee Reinvestigation and Integrity Strengthening. It directed immigration officers to identify and detain refugees who had not yet adjusted their status, treating pending or unsubmitted green card applications as grounds for mandatory custody. The policy targeted refugees who had entered legally, cleared background checks, and had no criminal record.

The International Refugee Assistance Project described the policy as unprecedented in the history of U.S. refugee resettlement. No prior administration had used the one-year adjustment requirement as a basis for mandatory detention. Legal scholars said the policy confused the administrative obligation to apply for a green card with refugee legal status itself, which doesn't expire because a green card application is delayed.

USCIS processing backlogs have left hundreds of thousands of refugees waiting for green card interviews. The average wait time for a refugee adjustment of status interview reached 26 months in fiscal year 2025, up from 14 months in 2022. Many refugees who have been in the United States for more than a year have already submitted their applications but have not received an interview date or a final decision.

Under Operation PARRIS as written, a refugee with a pending application who had not yet received an interview date would still have been subject to arrest. Advocates called this a deliberate use of an agency-created backlog as a legal trap against people who had followed the law exactly as required.

Six refugees living in 🏛️Massachusetts, along with Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts and the International Institute of New England, filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in early March 2026. Democracy Forward and the International Refugee Assistance Project represented the plaintiffs. The lawsuit argued the DHS policy was an unlawful reinterpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, violated due process, and was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The plaintiff refugees originally came from countries including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Several had been in the United States for 12 to 24 months and had pending green card applications in active USCIS processing when DHS announced Operation PARRIS.

U.S. District Judge RSRichard Stearns, a Clinton appointee in Boston, blocked enforcement of the policy on March 23, 2026. He ruled the DHS policy was an unlawful departure from decades of practice and that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their legal challenge. The preliminary injunction prevents DHS from arresting or detaining refugees under Operation PARRIS while the case proceeds on the merits.

Judge Stearns found that DHS had provided no legal authority supporting its novel interpretation that refugees who haven't completed the green card process are subject to mandatory detention. The injunction applies to the six named plaintiffs and to a broader class of similarly situated refugees. The administration is expected to appeal to the First Circuit.

The ruling adds to a growing body of federal court decisions blocking immigration enforcement actions that target legally admitted or protected individuals. Courts have issued injunctions against DHS policies targeting visa holders, Temporary Protected Status recipients, asylum seekers, and immigrants with pending humanitarian applications in recent months. The administration has appealed many of those rulings, creating a stack of immigration cases working through the circuit courts toward the Supreme Court.

The refugee detention case is distinct because it targets individuals with the most thorough pre-admission screening of any immigration category, making it harder for the government to argue an unvetted risk justifies mandatory detention.

The principle of non-refoulement, embedded in the 1951 Refugee Convention and U.S. law, prohibits returning people to countries where they face persecution. Mandatory detention of refugees without criminal grounds implicates that principle if it leads to de facto removal pressure. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a statement saying Operation PARRIS, if enforced, would violate U.S. obligations under the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which the United States ratified.

The March 23 injunction stops the immediate threat, but does not resolve the underlying legal question of how much enforcement authority DHS has over legally admitted refugees who have not yet completed their green card paperwork.