Refugees without green cards could be arrested under a new Trump administration policy.

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/19/us/trump-news

Refugees without green cards could be arrested under a new Trump administration policy.

Refugees who were lawfully admitted to the United States could be arrested if they have not yet obtained a green card, a change to previous policy that is the Trump administration’s latest effort to scrutinize immigrants who were approved for status.

In a new memo, which was described in court filings on Wednesday, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said immigration agents would be required to detain refugees if they had not applied for legal permanent status after a year of living in the country.

Refugees would be “inspected and examined for admission to the United States” after being detained, according to the memo, which was issued on Wednesday by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It was unclear how long refugees could be kept in detention. According to the memo, they would be confined for “the reasonable length of time it takes” to re-examine their cases.

The memo is part of the Trump administration’s broad effort to target refugees and tighten pathways for immigrants to legally enter or remain in the United States. Last month, the Homeland Security Department announced that it would review thousands of refugee cases in Minnesota, requiring them to submit to new interviews and background checks amid a surge of federal immigration enforcement in the state.

The new policy rescinds an Obama-era memo that had previously determined that a refugee’s failure to apply for legal permanent status within a year was not sufficient grounds to detain or deport them. In a statement, a Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson said the agency was enforcing immigration laws that required the federal government to inspect refugees after their first year in the United States.

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