Join us on March 11 for a webinar explaining the current situation for refugees in Minnesota and their ongoing lawsuit. Live interpretation will be available in Somali and Dari.
Join at bit.ly/webinar-mn
Purple graphic with white text reading "Statement: The escalating conflict between the United States, Israel, Iran, and associated groups poses a grave risk to all civilians, including IRAP’s staff in Lebanon and Jordan and our clients across the region. Displaced people and refugees in Iran and Lebanon are particularly vulnerable due to the ongoing airstrikes. In Lebanon, civilians, including refugees, also face an Israeli ground invasion with mass evacuation orders of major cities and many villages, resulting in ongoing displacement. In this time of chaos and upheaval, IRAP calls for adherence to international law and the protection of all civilians, including refugees." At the bottom of the graphic is the logo of IRAP, the International Refugee Assistance Project.
BREAKING: We’re suing to block the Trump-Vance admin's policy ordering the mandatory arrest and potentially indefinite detention of lawfully admitted refugees.
The administration is using its failure to process green card applications to target refugees for deportation. We will see them in court.
Lupe Aguirre, senior litigation attorney at IRAP, via
@nytimes.com:
The administration’s “push to strip valued community members of their legal status and send them back to danger in Syria is unconscionable...”
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/u...
"The systemic failure to identify and accommodate disability in immigration processes continues to result in senseless tragedies. We must ensure the life and dignity of people with disabilities is protected."
- Elham Youssefian, IRAP Director of Disability Inclusion and Accessibility
"The death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam highlights the neglect and abuse immigrants with disabilities face every day, as well as DHS's cruel practice of releasing people alone in the streets with no way to contact their families or get safely home."
Join us on February 26 at 9am ET for a webinar where we discuss the findings and share insights of a new briefing we will publish alongside the European Disability Forum that analyzes the EU Asylum and Migration Pact from a disability perspective.
Register today:
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Today, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law team and our trusted partners at The Advocates for Human Rights, @bergermontague.bsky.social, and @irap.bsky.social will be arguing in the UHA v. Bondi case at the Minneapolis Federal Courthouse.
Stay tuned for updates on the case!
“This memo is part of a broad and concerted effort to strip refugees of their legal status and render them deportable. This gov't will clearly stop at nothing to terrorize refugee communities, and really all immigrants, while trampling over our constitutional rights.”
www.cnn.com/2026/02/19/p...
IRAP's Laurie Ball Cooper on DHS's plans to detain refugees: “I am concerned that the Feb. 18 memo and the indiscriminate detention of refugees in Minnesota are the opening salvos in an attack on refugees resettled all over the United States.”
Read more:
www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
Lupe Aguirre, Senior Litigation Attorney at IRAP: “The court order protecting thousands of Syrian community members from an immediate and catastrophic loss of legal status remains in effect and we will continue to fight this illegal termination in court...”
NEW: Yesterday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a District Court order that delays the Trump Admin’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syria while the legal case moves forward. Read our press release: refugeerights.org/news-resourc...
From our lawsuit challenging the arrest and detention of refugees in Minnesota: “No statute authorizes these warrantless arrests. ICE’s own guidance states that there is no authority to detain refugees merely because they have not yet adjusted their status.”
The article features "Anna", a refugee from Central Africa, who was arrested and detained as part of a "re-vetting" operation, "to look for grounds to strip [refugees] of their status retroactively."
Important article by @jonathanblitzer.bsky.social on the government's efforts to strip legal immigrants and refugees of their status and render them deportable. www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...
"Compliance with the law is long overdue, and IRAP will continue to hold the government accountable to our Afghan allies who are still at risk from the Taliban." Read more about the current status of the SIV Program: reason.com/2026/02/11/s... via @reason.com
Today one year ago we filed Pacito v. Trump, our lawsuit challenging the suspension of refugee resettlement to the US. Josephine is one of the plaintiffs who was able to successfully resettle and join her family, but the fight to keep resettlement open to many more families seeking safety continues.
IRAP Europe's Legal Director Peter Varga on recent shifts in EU immigration policy towards externalization, "whose primary goal is to keep people out of Europe, despite credible and persistent reports of grave human rights abuses...”
eureports.com/2026/02/irre...
NEW: On Friday, a federal court ordered the Trump administration to abide by a plan to adjudicate SIV applications in a timely manner.
While the expanded travel ban continues to prevent all Afghan nationals from entering the U.S., COM processing must resume immediately:
NEW on the IRAP blog: the impact of the closure of Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) and the termination of humanitarian pathways to the US on forced migrants in Costa Rica. refugeerights.org/news-resourc...
The failure to authorize more Special Immigrant Visas is a catastrophic betrayal of the allies who supported the U.S mission in Afghanistan and are still at risk from the Taliban.
Congress must not leave them behind.
A huge win for Haitian TPS holders last night:
Refugees and asylum seekers are being arrested in Minnesota and flown to Texas.
“It really is a campaign of terror. It is designed to scare people." - Laurie Ball Cooper, IRAP
A federal judge has ordered ICE to stop illegally detaining refugees in Minnesota. This is a huge, but temporary win for refugee communities — we must ensure this practice ends for good! Call on your elected officials now to speak out against this injustice and oppose any further ICE funding:
BREAKING: A federal judge just granted a temporary restraining order stopping ICE from arresting refugees in Minnesota and ordering the release of those currently detained. This is a huge win for ICE accountability.
Read more:
refugeerights.org/news-resourc...
“I fled my home country because I was facing government repression,” wrote a plaintiff who was flown to Texas in shackles after he was abruptly arrested at his home earlier this month. “I can't believe it’s happening again here. It’s chilling and I'm scared.”
Article by @alexwoodward.bsky.social
Happening tomorrow! There is still time to register through the link below.
IRAP condemns the Trump administration’s increasingly deadly campaign of terror and impunity against immigrant and non-immigrant Minnesotans alike. The killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal immigration agents are devastating and outrageous, and they underscore the lawlessness of the administration's weaponization of immigration enforcement. It’s tearing our communities apart and making everyone less safe. IRAP will continue to support refugees who are being targeted, and hold the federal government accountable for its abuses of power.
ICYMI: This weekend we sued the Trump administration for its unlawful arrest and detention of refugees.
"The lawsuit said... the government was using the operation to 'trigger a mass termination of refugee status' and to make refugees vulnerable to deportation."
“The Trump administration is intentionally and illegally terrorizing resettled refugees who are not accused of any wrongdoing." -- IRAP Staff Attorney Kimberly Grano in
@startribune.com coverage of our latest lawsuit: www.startribune.com/class-action...
