President Donald Trump’s mass immigrant arrest scheme suffered a huge setback on Wednesday, as a federal judge in Minnesota ordered a halt to any arrest and detention of lawful refugees not accused of committing crimes.
Senior U.S. District Judge John Tunheim ordered that the moves to arrest Minnesota’s 5,600 refugees, transport them to other states, and interrogate them in detention cannot continue — and that anyone who was shipped out to other states in this manner must be returned to Minnesota.
“It is … essential to emphasize that the refugees impacted by this Order are carefully and thoroughly vetted individuals who have been invited into the United States because of persecution in the countries from which they have come,” wrote Tunheim, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. “They are not committing crimes on our streets, nor did they illegally cross the border. Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully — and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries.”
“At its best, America serves as a haven of individual liberties in a world too often full of tyranny and cruelty,” he continued. “We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos.”
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick lauded the move as a massive blow to Trump’s efforts to terrorize immigrants.
“HUGE news!” he wrote on X. “This is about a Trump admin effort to arrest thousands of screened and vetted refugees in Minnesota and fly them to Texas to be jailed and then interrogated. After the interrogation is over, people are being dumped on the street and told to find their own way back.”
This comes as the Trump administration faces a number of other legal challenges to their crackdown in Minnesota, including a federal judge who has threatened acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd Lyons with contempt of court.
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