Operation PARRIS: The Uncertain Fate of 5,600 Green Card Applicants in Minnesota
On Tuesday morning, a Venezuelan couple arrived at Jane Graupman’s office, sobbing over the unknown fate of their 20-year-old son, who had been taken away by masked federal agents. The mother had been getting ready for work when their house was surrounded by men with drawn guns, claiming it was just a matter of fixing some paperwork. The son was immediately removed from the home, leaving the family in distress.
Graupman, executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota, has seen a growing number of similar cases involving recent immigrants with lawful refugee status who have applied for but not yet received their permanent residency, also known as their Green Cards. A distraught Sudanese family also arrived at the International Institute with a similar story, their son gone without any explanation.
Transported to Texas with No Due Process
The refugees are quickly transported to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, and within 24 hours, they are taken to Texas, with no access to an attorney, no clarification of what’s happening, and no due process. Graupman received an explanatory memo from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security less than a week ago, stating that DHS is “reexamining” the refugee status of 5,600 Minnesotans who have entered the country legally but have not yet been granted their Green Cards.
The memo mentions that the pipeline cases will be put through “vetting enhancements,” including fresh background checks, re-interviews, and merit reviews, all part of Operation PARRIS, or “Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening.” The operation is an offshoot of federal fraud investigations that began last year in Minnesota, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) heavily involved in the process.
A Growing Number of Detainees
According to the Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis, at least 100 people had been detained as of early this past week. The efforts build on a presidential executive order issued last January and a presidential proclamation from last June, requiring federal agencies to identify and implement new vetting enhancements to safeguard the nation from foreign terrorists and other public safety threats.
Graupman described the experience of her clients as “nothing short of terrifying,” with no evident focus on any one ethnicity or particular country of origin. Despite the stated goal of keeping Americans safe, criminal history, or the lack thereof, appears irrelevant. “Today we’ve probably had a dozen families that have been impacted by this,” Graupman said. “We’ve had people walk in all week, and they say, ‘they took my son, they took my husband.'”
Restrictions on Green Card Applications
The target of 5,600 Green Card applicants roughly reflects the number of refugee arrivals in Minnesota in the past three years, Graupman said. These individuals have already undergone a thorough screening process, including 14 to 15 health and background checks, to enter the country. The Trump administration has a list of 40 countries for which Green Card applications are not being processed, and these restrictions are growing.
The administration announced this past week that it would suspend immigrant visas from 75 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, and Somalia, beginning January 21. A woman from Sudan, who has been living in Minneapolis since civil war reignited in her home country in 2023, reported that ICE agents came to her parking lot and photographed her car, and later returned to her front door, asking to be let in.
Ethnic Karen Refugees Living in Fear
George Thawmoo, co-chair of the Karen Organization of Minnesota, explained that refugees might not apply for a Green Card within a year of arriving in the U.S. due to various reasons, such as being overwhelmed by the experience of moving to a new country, losing supporting paperwork, or fearing and not understanding the system. These issues amount to paperwork errors that could be easily corrected and have nothing to do with national security.
Thawmoo reported that ICE agents removed an ethnic Karen man from a laundromat and transported him to federal detention. They followed another Karen man home from a son’s haircut appointment and gained entry into his apartment complex in St. Paul, where they asked to interview his wife, a mother of four children who has lived in the U.S. since 2024. She was detained and flown out of state for processing, leaving behind a 4-month-old baby.
For more information on Operation PARRIS and its impact on Green Card applicants in Minnesota, visit Here
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