By Ray Sanchez, Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
(CNN) — Two days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota reportedly tackled a home caregiver from sub-Saharan Africa to the snowy pavement and took her away in a van, a close friend made the 1,400-mile journey to a controversial Texas detention facility where she’s being held.
“She was so surprised to see me,” said her friend, Justin, a 40-year-old home caregiver who asked his full name not be used for fear of retaliation. “She never believed that anybody knew where she was.”
She isn’t alone.
Dozens of asylum seekers like her, as well as refugees who passed a rigorous, years-long vetting process before being admitted to the United States, have been arrested in Minnesota in recent weeks, immigration lawyers and advocates say.
The immigrants are shackled and placed on flights to detention facilities in Texas, where they are forced to recount painful asylum claims with limited or no contact with family members or attorneys, lawyers and advocates say. Some, after days of interviews with officers, have been released in Texas without money, identification or phones. Others remain detained without information about why they’re being held.
“It really is a campaign of terror. It is designed to scare people,” said Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for US legal programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project. “I know there have been many tales of disorganization. I’m not sure this is one.”
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, acknowledged Thursday the immigration enforcement effort in Minnesota needed to be “fixed” and said his team was working on a drawdown plan while sharpening the focus of operations on undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
Deployed by the administration to Minneapolis to manage ICE operations in the wake of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, Homan said not “everything that’s been done here has been perfect” and that “certain improvements can and should be made.”
‘Arrest first, investigate later’
The refugees come from countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria, El Salvador, Venezuela and Russia, Ball Cooper said. They entered the US legally but cannot apply for permanent status until a year after they’ve been admitted to the country, as required under US law. Ball Cooper and other advocates have been in touch with some of those refugees, who they say have not been charged with crimes or immigration violations that would leave them open to removal proceedings.
“I am aware of cases where the person was arrested, detained in Minnesota and put on a plane (to Texas) in 90 minutes or less,” Ball Cooper told CNN, adding that attorneys and advocates in Minnesota and Texas have been left scrambling to connect with many of the refugees.
Late Wednesday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from arresting or detaining resettled refugees in Minnesota while a class-action lawsuit challenging the practice plays out. The judge also ordered the immediate release of all detained refugees in Minnesota, as well as the release of those taken out of the state within five days and gave the government 48 hours to provide a list of detained refugees.
A handful of refugees in the case are represented by the International Refugee Assistance Project and other legal and advocacy organizations. The suit and attorneys for the plaintiffs accuse federal officers of “hunting down” resettled refugees door-to-door and transferring them to facilities in Texas.
“It’s a fishing expedition,” Ball Cooper said of the administration’s targeting of refugees, including chi