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Urgent Action Needed: Denounce Wrongful, Discriminatory Refugee Arrests, Detention, and Attempts to Remove Thousands of Refugees from Our Neighborhoods

Background: On January 9, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formally announced the launch of Operation “Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening” or “PARRIS.” This followed media reports from November 24, 2025 of a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) memo that ordered a “review and re-interview” of all refugees who entered via the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program under the Biden administration. 

Operation PARRIS has an “initial focus” on 5,600 resettled refugees in Minnesota who have refugee status and have not yet received their green cards. Many details remain unclear, but some recently-arrived refugees in Minnesota have already been arrested – and then flown to and detained in other states like Texas – by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Operation PARRIS compounds the significant harm caused by DHS since the Trump administration’s escalation of immigration actions across the country. The horrific use of violence by ICE, particularly recently, is not an aberration; it is part of a larger pattern of federal immigration officers terrorizing and even killing our neighbors, friends, and community members.

Operation PARRIS is cruel, illegal, and a massive waste of limited USCIS resources. With a net backlog of over 4 million cases, USCIS is using limited available resources to investigate and re-interview refugees without justification. All refugees in the U.S. have gone through an extremely extensive vetting and screening process and are some of the most vetted travelers in the world – checks that were continuously improved across previous administrations. This operation is also deeply destabilizing for individual refugees and refugee families who already survived violence and persecution. USCIS’s implication that there is a chance these individuals don’t meet the refugee definition is baseless, defamatory, and reckless. And it is unconscionable that refugees we’ve already welcomed – for whom this country has provided freedom, safety, opportunity, and a path to citizenship – could be yanked out of their communities, and potentially sent back to places where their lives could be in danger. 

Right now is a critical time to ensure the Trump administration hears a swift and powerful response that refugees are welcome in our communities. Urge your elected leaders to:

  • Hold the administration accountable to terminate Operation PARRIS, end these harmful enforcement actions, and halt any actions that would terminate refugee status, remove protections, stop required processing, or retroactively review entire cohorts of resettled individuals.
  • Demand full transparency for any refugees arrested, detained, interviewed, or removed: provide all documents, analyses, screening protocols, and timelines behind this operation, and ensure that statutory consultation requirements were followed. 
  • Speak out publicly and do everything in their power to safeguard their refugee communities.  

We want all Americans who came to this country seeking safety to know that we will not stop speaking out and hope to uplift your voices in any way we can.

Click on the right-hand side to input your information to send an email directly to your elected leaders.

RCUSA Resources:

Emergency Preparedness & Know Your Rights 

Mental Health Resources for Immigrants & Refugees 

Planning for Travel

Legal Assistance (National) 

*For more ways to get involved in Minnesota, please click here.