A federal court in Boston has temporarily blocked a new immigration policy that would limit the time refugees have to respond if their refugee status were revoked. Under the Trump administration’s new rule, refugees only have 10 days to prepare a case if U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decides to end their status, down from the 30 days they’ve had since the early 1980s.
The ruling comes one day after the International Institute of New England and other New England-based refugee advocacy organizations filed a class action lawsuit in Boston on Monday.
“This decision provides critical protection for refugees who have already endured persecution and undergone extensive vetting to build safe lives in the United States,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “This order offers immediate relief to families facing uncertainty and fear, and we will continue showing up to court to ensure that the government honors its legal obligations to refugees and the communities they call home.”
Judge Julia E. Kobick has yet to rule on the other aspects of the lawsuit: The advocacy groups also sued the Trump administration over the decision to not process applications for green cards from refugees who were admitted during the Biden administration, and requiring USCIS to re-interview refugees who have already been vetted.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an email to NHPR that these policies are about strengthening accountability, alleging that there was an “alarming erosion of screening and vetting measures under the Biden Administration in order to rush processing and maximize the number of refugees admitted to the United States.”
“This lawsuit is yet another frivolous attempt to disrupt the Trump administration’s commitment to enforce our country’s immigration laws as intended by Congress,” wrote USCIS Spokesman Zach Kahler.
Over the past 15 years, more than 5,000 refugees have been resettled in New Hampshire, according to data from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. But Thielman said the outcome of this case could affect about 550 refugees admitted to New Hampshire during the Biden administration, about half of whom don’t have a green card.
“We want the court to tell the government to stop re-vetting refugees who arrived during the last administration. We think that's unfair just to target people who arrived during one administration. And actually, that's unconstitutional against the law,” said
Jeff Thielman, president and CEO of the International Institute of New England, a refugee advocacy nonprofit based in New Hampshire.
This is not the first time the Institute and its partners have sued the federal government. Another policy would have let U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrest and detain thousands of refugees if they didn’t get a green card within a year of arriving in the U.S., but it was overturned in March by U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston.
