For years, the one-year adjustment requirement for refugees was part of federal law but lacked consistent enforcement. Refugees who are granted admission to the United States are supposed to apply for lawful permanent resident status after one year. The law states that they “shall” return or be returned for inspection and examination. However, in practice, this deadline often served more as an expectation for compliance rather than a trigger for action.
On February 18, that changed.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a new memorandum directing USCIS and ICE to view the one-year mark as a mandatory checkpoint for re-evaluation. The administration’s stance is clear: Refugee admission comes with conditions. Adjustment after one year is not just encouraged; it is required. If refugees do not follow through with this step, DHS is obligated to enforce the statute:
The directive, dated Feb. 18 and submitted by government lawyers in a federal court filing that remains sealed, instructs ICE to detain refugees who entered the U.S. lawfully but who have not obtained permanent residency — also known as green card — a year after their admission. pic.twitter.com/vwGPdRkB5x
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DHS must treat the one-year mark as a mandatory re-vetting point for all refugees who have not adjusted to LPR status, ensuring either that they are scheduled to ‘return’ to custody for inspection or, if they do not comply, that they be ‘returned’ to custody through enforcement action.
The language does not set out an advisory – it is operational and requires action.
Under previous ICE guidance established in 2010, simply failing to secure lawful permanent resident status was not considered a valid reason for detention on its own. However, this policy has now been officially revoked. In its place, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has linked the one-year statutory requirement directly to its authority for detention.
The changes are quite straightforward: The refugee must return, or be returned, to Department of Homeland Security custody for inspection and examination for admission as an LPR.
And, if the eventual ‘return’ is not voluntary, the memo leaves no wiggle room: If the refugee does not voluntarily return, DHS will return the individual to custody (i.e., arrest and detain) for this purpose.
The directive further clarifies that inspection detention is not limited to a short administrative hold:
Detention pursuant to INA § 209(a)(1), 8 U.S.C. § 1159(a)(1), is not indefinite, but it is also not limited to merely 48 hours. Instead, it may last for the reasonable length of time it takes to inspect and examine the alien to determine whether he or she is admissible.
The memo essentially turns the one-year deadline into a mandatory checkpoint that comes with the authority to make arrests. DHS maintains that this change is based on data analysis. As outlined in the memorandum, a review conducted by USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security examined 31,000 refugees who were admitted from Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela between 2021 and 2024. The results were significant, highlighting serious concerns:
10% had evidence of public safety concerns, including gang membership, that were not addressed.
That statistic alone calls into question the belief that the one-year inspection requirement was unnecessary. However, the larger concern, as noted by DHS, centers on incomplete screening processes and failures in identity verification.
Over 42% had been insufficiently vetted to determine whether they presented a public safety concern due to an inability to fully verify identity.
In other words, a significant portion of cases left the government unable to definitively identify who was being granted permanent status. When the Department of Homeland Security took a step back to assess the entire sample, the findings were even more troubling:
Less than 47% could be conclusively found to not represent a public safety concern.
DHS argues that the statutory requirement for reinspection is not being enforced with the seriousness that Congress intended. The statute explicitly states that refugees “shall” return or be returned for inspection at the one-year mark, and that language has always been in place. However, what has changed is the approach to enforcement.
Given that 10 percent of reviewed cases had unresolved public safety concerns and over 42 percent could not be fully verified for identity, it’s hard to justify treating the one-year rule as if it were merely optional.
This memo does not introduce a new immigration category; instead, it puts into action an existing admission condition. It transforms what had become a procedural deadline into a statutory checkpoint, supported by custody authority. The directive to ICE is not about creating new laws; rather, it instructs them to carry out the law that Congress has already established.
