The ICE ‘Conveyor Belt’ In Texas

0:07Refugees have historically been shielded from immigration enforcement in the US and that includes deportation Now that's changing. It started this month in Minnesota. Reports of door-to-door visits from immigration officers to refugees' homes. ICE agents making arrests in grocery store parking lots, at workplaces and outside of schools. And letters sent to refugees in the process of receiving their green cards, asking them to present themselves in person. The letters have very little information. One line printed at the top reads, Please come to the office listed below at the time and place indicated in connection with an official matter.

0:45Then a date, a time, and the address to the Whipple Federal Building, immigration headquarters in Minneapolis. When refugees arrive for their appointments, their questions, sometimes for hours, and in some cases arrested and detained on the spot. The Trump administration last year announced an operation to review all refugees admitted under the Biden presidency. That's some 200 ,000 people across the country. Now that operation is launched, aimed at Minnesota's 5 ,600 refugees. Today on the show, we take a closer look at the operation and what immigration lawyers are calling the ICE conveyor belt with our guests.

1:20I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get into.

1:30Let's start the conversation by meeting our guests. Jen Grotman is the executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota. It's a nonprofit serving refugees in the state. Jane, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. And joining us from New York is Stephanie Gee. She's the Senior Director of U.S. Legal Services at the International Refugee Assistance Project. Stephanie, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me today, Jen. We also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for this discussion. We'll share some of what we heard from them during the program, and you'll find their full statements on our website, the1a.org.

2:03Now, the Department of Homeland Security has begun what it calls Operation Paris in Minnesota. That's short for Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening. DHS says the target of the operation is the 5 ,600 refugees who have not received green cards yet. Jane, does not having green cards yet mean they're in the country illegally? Absolutely not. And that's a great question. Important for people to know that when refugees, when people get refugee status, they have been waiting for a long time. They've gone through many, many, many months of security clearances. The FBI, the Immigration Service, Department of Homeland Security.

2:51They have several biometric screenings. They have medical screenings. The list is on and on. They're the most vetted population coming to the United States. And so when they arrive to the United States in refugee status, they've been given that before they arrive, and they are in legal status as a refugee. They don't have to adjust to get their green card, but most every refugee family does. And so important to also know that refugees can't apply for their green card until they've been here for one year. and then once they apply, it takes another year to get your green card. And so for many of these folks that are being targeted through Operation Paris, the impetus for why they're being targeted, no one seems to know.

3:41They have just recently arrived to the country so they wouldn't have their green cards yet, and most of them have applied for them. Some of them are actually receiving those green cards while they're in detention. Well, we mentioned the arrests at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. And I'm curious if you can tell us, Jane, just a little bit more about these letters being sent to refugees and the strategy of getting them to come in. Yes. So the letters are being hand-delivered. People are finding them in snowbanks. They're finding them on their front porch. They're not being delivered through the U.S.

4:19mail. and so they get these letters and they are very confused about what they're for. It doesn't explain that. So we help folks get prepared for those. When folks first got those letters, they were asked to go to Whipple and they would go there in complying with the letter for an appointment that they were asked to arrive to and they would be immediately arrested and detained even if they had legal representation with them. We got the statement from a DHS official about the re-vetting of refugees. Quote, under President Trump and Secretary Noem's decisive leadership, USCIS, that's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is ensuring all aliens from high-risk countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.

5:11The safety and security of the American people always comes first. U.S. CIS is conducting a comprehensive review of anyone from anywhere who poses a threat to the U.S., including those identified in the president's latest proclamation to restore law and order in our nation's immigration system. Now, we mentioned the around 5 ,600 refugees DHS says it's focused on in Minnesota. And in November, a memo from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the Trump administration will be reviewing all refugees admitted under the Biden administration. Again, that's around 200 ,000 people. Stephanie, what is their explanation for why they're focusing on people who came into the country with refugee status under the Biden administration?

5:54That's a great question, Jen. And I think the answer is that they don't have a good explanation for it, and they haven't offered one. I think it's clear that this is a political operation, and it has no basis in anything related to real fact or policy needs. And we see that because even the justification they've given around saying they're just trying to make sure that refugees are vetted and screened to the maximum extent possible. Refugees are already vetted and screened to the maximum extent possible. They go through that extensive vetting overseas and they have extensive interviews and background checks that are run on them.

6:30And that was true for every refugee who entered the United States during the Biden administration, as well as for refugees who've entered in the years before that. there was no change in policy or procedure for this program that would warrant a specific targeting of folks who entered in those most recent years, other than to try to cast refugees who entered under the previous president as somehow uniquely a threat to this country or to our public safety in a way that has really no factual justification at all. Jane, what do you know about what happens in these interviews that refugees are being called in for?

7:05Well, so with these letters, we are having people show up at Whipple for their appointments and getting arrested and detained. There's no clarity or explanation of what's going to happen to them. They don't know how long they're going to be detained. The conditions at Whipple and other places are inhumane. And people are within, you know, 24 hours, usually less than that, they are transported, flown to Texas. either to Houston or El Paso or another detention center there. People don't know why they're there. We've heard clients tell us that they thought they were flying, being flown out of the country and deported when they were flying to Minneapolis to Texas because nobody told them where they were going.

7:50So the stories are harrowing. And now we're having people that are asked to go, instead of going to Whipple, they're asked to go to the immigration offices. They're going there. and we've had clients that have been interviewed for six hours asking the same questions that they were just asked a year ago or two years ago to arrive in the country. And I would just also add that, you know, Christine Ohm's statement, her own agency, DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has already vetted refugees before they arrive here. The clients who you work with, are they all being sent to Texas after these interviews?

8:33Are some of them released? And if so, do you know what makes the difference? The vast majority of them are being flown to Texas. And no, we don't really, there's no rhyme or reason really to any of this, but the vast majority of people that show up or have ICE come to their homes with assault rifles drawn around their homes, taken to detention, are being flown to Texas. We have a gentleman in Mississippi. He's actually been flown from Minnesota to Texas, to Minnesota, to Mississippi. He's been on about four different flights, five different flights. So people don't have any idea what's happening to them.

9:17They keep asking us, why is this happening to me? And to be clear, Jane, when people show up at Whipple, are they being questioned there or are they first being taken to Texas and being questioned in that state? So I think some of them, most of them are just getting taken to Texas. Some of them have been interviewed here and then taken to Texas, but most of what we're hearing is people are going to other states and getting interviewed there. Stephanie, at the International Refugee Assistance Project, you are alerted as soon as a refugee is arrested and detained. Walk us through how much you know and what happens next.

10:00Sure. So what we've seen happen is that we're working in partnership with a lot of incredible organizations in Minnesota and beyond who have developed a system for sometimes alerting us if they are aware that someone has been moved to Texas and they want some assistance for those individuals once they're detained in Texas. And so my team at IRAP has been working to try to locate these individuals, which, as Jane just said, they're being moved from detention center to detention center. It's very easy for people to go missing in the system briefly and to not show up as anywhere in an identifiable location for a while when they're being moved around.

10:39And so we've been working with a team of lawyers in Minnesota, across this country, and in Texas to find these folks to try to schedule virtual legal visits with them if possible and to try to represent them in these interviews. And it's been a very challenging process because they've really been put into this disappearing system where it's very hard to know where they are sometimes. As we've been hearing, a growing number of refugees arrested by ICE are being detained in Texas. What we know about why and what they experienced there, that's just ahead.

11:14Let's get back to our discussion and add a new voice. Elora Mukherjee is an immigration lawyer and director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. Elora, welcome back. Thank you for having me. We also got this message from a refugee living in the U.S., originally from Nicaragua.

11:34The current immigration situation is chaotic and inhumane for us refugees in the U.S. Sadly, we live in fear, trembling, thinking anything can happen to us at any moment, anywhere. There are no guarantees for us at the moment. It's worrying to witness how we, people who obtain the refugee status, because in our countries we experience conflict and hardship. In my case, due to my work in human rights, I had to face so much risk of persecution in my country of origin, Nicaragua. Now I don't feel safe to go to the market, buy food, and know I'll come back home. It's traumatizing, not only experiencing a drastic cultural change and shock, but also feeling stuck in this limbo or on a slippery slope because I'm scared of them catching me, detaining me, using their force to be violent with me or even murder me because one cannot know anymore what guarantees we have for our lives.

12:29Thank you for sharing that. Now, Stephanie, the Trump administration ended temporary protected status for Nicaraguans in July. What has that meant for the 4 ,000 Nicaraguans here who were on TPS status? The Trump administration has really been attacking temporary protected status as a safety mechanism for folks who are in this country from many countries and unable to go home due to instability or problems in their home countries that make them unable to live there safely. And so we have seen an attempt to end temporary protected status for so many nationalities by this administration. And many of those efforts have been challenged in courts by organizations and groups representing folks who benefit from temporary protected status because it is such a devastating change for somebody who is relying on the status to stay in this country lawfully, safely, to be able to work here and live here in peace, just as folks with refugee status and people who get asylum and many other forms of lawful status allow people to live here legally and peacefully under normal circumstances.

13:39Well, when we talk about the refugees who are arrested by ICE, it's important to sort of track where they're ending up. Immigration lawyers describe what they call a conveyor belt system of transporting people arrested by ICE to detention in Texas. Jane, what does that look like in Minnesota with the refugees who have been detained? Well, we're hearing many stories from people. They're all harrowing. We had one example. We had a 19-year-old who was leaving his apartment to go to school. And there were two ICE agents in his apartment building. and they were looking for a specific person. They saw him and they said to him, what, show me your papers because that's the world that we're all living in in Minnesota.

14:23Everyone is carrying their papers. And so he did. He showed him their refugee papers, his refugee papers. And the one officer said, oh, you're good. You're in legal status. You're a refugee. You're here legally. The other one said, no, we're going to take you in. They took him in. And after being there for three days, he was transported to Texas. After being in detention for many days, he asked if he could please have his documents back. They're not returning documents to people. And he was beaten by four ICE or Border Patrol agents. And he was bleeding. His shirt was full of blood. He was given, they wouldn't give him any medical help, and which we've heard that consistently, people that need medical attention are not getting it.

15:14And then he was eventually dumped out on the street in Texas, in a state he's never been to, without his documents. So it's very difficult for people to make arrangements to fly home or to get home. And so family members are then having to get in the car and drive down to Texas to pick up people that are just let out on the street. Is that how he eventually made it back to Minnesota? We were able to get him a flight back with a lot of trial and tribulation. Laura, why Texas? Why is that where people are being sent? The administration will say the reason they're taking so many people to Texas is because that's where they have the most bed space available.

15:58That is only part of the story. When you look at the full story, it's also because Texas is located in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is the most conservative anti-civil rights, anti-immigrant rights federal circuit court of appeals in the country. It is a jurisdiction where it is extremely difficult for immigrants to prevail on their cases for immigration relief and other types of cases alleging civil rights violations. So the administration in many cases is trying to take people down to the Fifth Circuit, to Texas, to Louisiana as quickly as possible because the federal courts there are favorable to this administration.

16:42And then it's also important to look at the immigration courts that are in Texas and in Louisiana. If you look at the judges on those courts, they are among the judges in the country who have the lowest rates of granting people asylum and other forms of humanitarian protections. Stephanie, how does the movement of people from one state to another affect the work of people who are trying to provide legal representation? It makes it incredibly challenging, and I think that's also by design. I do think that that is intentional and part of why they are moving folks in this way. As they move people from one detention center to another, people who are trying to find them, their family members, their loved ones, their attorneys, their advocates, have to both wait to see where they show up in this online IC Taney locator to understand where they are.

17:36Then they need to try to make contact with that detention center. Each detention center has its own rules and policies for phone calls, for emails, for how to actually schedule an appointment to speak to them. And then as they're moved from one place to another, you have to start that process all over again. And for some attorneys who are actually filing petitions with federal courts to try to get folks released from detention who are being unlawfully held this way, If they're moved from one state to another, it can also change the jurisdiction of the court that is supposed to be making decisions over those types of petitions.

18:10And so moving people around in this way is a very deliberate roadblock to folks who are trying to assist and also even just communicate with detainees. It's interesting. We've had many conversations on this show about immigration enforcement. But we're talking here about a very specific group of people, refugees. And, Jane, I'm curious, in the years that you've been doing this work, have you ever encountered this specific approach to either revetting refugees, detaining them? Have you seen this under any other administration? I've been doing this work, Jen, for almost 40 years. I have never, ever seen anything like this in my work life.

19:02And I have never, ever imagined that something like this could be happening in my community and in my country. These are people who have left their homes. They've been persecuted. They have to prove that. They have to prove that they are the most vulnerable people. And that's part of their screening also. So they get to the United States. It's I'm very proud to be in a country where we allow folks to come and have a respite and start a new life over. I see every day in my work what that means to people. They come with incredible motivation, determination, a lot of pent up ambition. And they just unleash that when they get here.

19:43They go to school, all these opportunities they didn't have in their own country. And so to now see them afraid to leave their home, my own colleagues are afraid to leave their home. Many of them are U.S. citizens. They don't feel safe to come to work. We don't advise them to come to work. And so it is incredibly sad and just unbelievable that this is happening. Well, and Stephanie, has the Trump administration taken this approach to everyone who has refugee status in the country right now? So we've really seen this effort concentrated on refugees in Minnesota. But we have no reason to believe that the Trump administration is not planning to expand this type of operation elsewhere.

20:29And I think that's why we're hearing from refugee clients and folks around the country outside of Minnesota who are so scared also and who are saying, is this coming for me too? And I think for that reason, what's happening to refugees in this country should be setting off alarm bells for everyone. Because as Jane just said, this is an incredible escalation of this administration's attack on immigrants in this country in general, particularly signaling that even people with fully lawful status who came here with permission, who have status that doesn't expire, that provides a very straightforward path to citizenship, that these folks are vulnerable in Minnesota.

21:05They could be vulnerable anywhere in this country. And so could really anybody. And if anything, I think this policy that we're seeing unfold in Minnesota is telling us very clearly that the aggressive and violent ICE activity we're seeing there, it's not about public safety or law enforcement or preventing crime or going after fraud or any of the kind of pretextual things that the administration keeps saying are the reasons for doing this. because if that were true, they wouldn't be wasting federal resources there or anywhere in this country on hunting down and terrorizing a community of people who were invited to be here and completely vetted before arriving and so vulnerable.

21:45And so, you know, I think I do want to also emphasize that that doesn't mean anybody of any kind of immigration status deserves to be terrorized in this way. Being snatched off the street like this and separated from their families and sent across the country in shackles, That's an incredibly dehumanizing and terrible way to treat anyone. But if there is any uncertainty about the legitimacy of these efforts, I think this attack on refugees really proves once and for all that it really has never been about enforcing immigration laws. It's about terrorizing communities of immigrants who belong here and sending a message to all of us that this administration is not interested in welcoming or allowing immigrants and refugees of all types to be in this country at all.

22:31And that should really alarm everyone. Now, we reached out to DHS for this discussion, and they sent us this statement about Operation Paris and the lawsuit against it from your organization, Stephanie Irap. It reads in part, quote, Minnesota is ground zero for the war on fraud. This operation in Minnesota demonstrates that the Trump administration will not stand by as the U.S. immigration system is weaponized by those seeking to defraud the American people. This is yet another lawless and activist order from the federal judiciary who continues to undermine our immigration laws. We look forward to being vindicated in court.

23:06American citizens and the rule of law come first always. Now, IRAP sued the Trump administration over the detention of refugees specifically. And a federal judge in Minnesota ordered a halt to Operation Paris in that case. And again, this is the program targeting refugees. What did the judge say, Stephanie? What role have we seen the courts play when it comes to the Trump administration's operations targeting refugees? I mean, I think that the judge's order, you know, the judge issued a temporary restraining order as kind of an initial step in the life of this lawsuit that we filed. And the judge's order was actually a really powerful condemnation of what we're seeing unfold in Minnesota, particularly with the refugee population.

23:49And I think that is so important because as this administration escalates these attacks on all sides on immigrants across this country, I think that the judiciary plays a crucial role in actually putting a stop to each of these policies as they come up. And we're seeing that unfold in some places in different ways. In this particular case, the judge's order not only said that these detained folks in Texas and Minnesota needed to be released, he went out of his way to say they need to be released in a way that treats them with dignity. They should not be dumped on the street the way that we have seen happen in Texas.

24:27If they're brought to Minnesota, he said, it's cold here. They shouldn't be just left in the cold with, you know, no assistance and no avenue to get home. That is inhumane treatment, and that is not allowed. That was such a powerful statement from the judiciary saying that this cannot stand. And this litigation will continue. It's an ongoing effort. But as kind of an initial step in the process, it was a really important signal, I think, from the judiciary. Laura, for those refugees who have been arrested and detained, taken to Texas, what is the repair here? If they feel they have been harmed, if they've experienced harm, is there a way for them to be made whole under the law?

25:16It's a great question. Overwhelmingly, once people are released from immigration detention centers, all they want to do is try to do everything right. Show up for all their ICE check-ins, comply with all alternatives to detention programs that they may be enrolled in. do everything possible to pursue their claims for immigration relief in this country. We saw in the first Trump administration, though, that when people were subject to family separations, a number of families did want to try and seek accountability against the federal government for the enormous distress, intentional distress and cruelty that was inflicted on babies, toddlers, children, and teenagers and their parents who were separated.

26:04Thousands of families and hundreds of those children still haven't been reunited with their parents. A number of those families filed what's called Federal Tort Claims Act administrative petitions. So this is an administrative process that allows individuals to seek damages against the federal government for intentional torts caused by federal actors. And after an administrative complaint is filed, a period of time passes, and then a person, a family, can pursue federal court litigation. This entire process is complex and difficult, and there are enormous barriers to entry. So yes, in theory, there is a mechanism for eventually seeking relief for individuals and families, but it's not an easy path.

26:54Well, Jane, very briefly, Trump border czar Tom Homan announced on Wednesday that the operation in Minnesota will be scaled down by 700 agents, leaving about 2 ,000 in the state. In just a couple of sentences, what do you think that will mean for refugees in Minnesota? I would say right now it really hasn't had an impact. I think refugees in Minnesota are still terrified. They're still staying home. We're still driving people to work. We're providing food for them. So I hope that over time, there is more of a drawdown and we can return to the life that we once had. But for now, people are still very, very scared.

27:29Well, we have to leave it there for today. But a big thank you to our guests. Stephanie Gee is Senior Director of U.S. Legal Services at the International Refugee Assistance Project. Jane Grotman of the International Institute of Minnesota. That's a nonprofit that's been helping refugees in Minnesota since 1919. And Elora Mukherjee. She's an immigration lawyer and the director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. Thanks to you all. Today's producer was Arfi Getty. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White.