Order protecting one state’s refugees extended

Judge says U.S. can’t ‘terrorize’ and deport immigrants living in Minnesota legally.

- By STEVE KARNOWSKI AND ED WHITE

OCTAVIO JONES AFP/Getty Images

ASYLUM seeker Nina with her daughter in Minnesota. Nina and her husband fear that U.S. immigration authorities will separate them from their daughter.

A federal judge extended an order protecting refugees in Minnesota who are lawfully in the U.S. from being arrested and deported, saying a Trump administration policy turns the “American Dream into a dystopian nightmare.”

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim granted a motion by advocates for refugees to convert a temporary restraining order he issued in January into a more permanent preliminary injunction while the case develops.

The order applies only in Minnesota. But the implications of a new national policy on refugees that the Department of Homeland Security announced Feb. 18 were a major part of the discussion at a hearing held by the judge the next day.