With The Immigration Crackdown, America Risks Violating Its Treaty Obligations

By Crystal Oborn and Madison McVan, Minnesota Reformer

January 27, 2026

That was the sign I held at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport years ago, a refugee family emerged at baggage claim. They walked toward us, tired and smiling, strangers waving American flags and holding handmade signs, welcoming them to their new home in the United States. They arrived with children in arms, several suitcases, and jackets that would soon prove no match for a Minnesota winter.

Two weeks earlier, the resettlement agency had called on short notice and asked if our group could assist with this family’s resettlement. We cleaned a rundown apartment, gathered donated furniture, found car seats and coats, bought phones, and stocked the fridge. All in the hope that when they arrived, they would feel comfortable.

That is what safety looks like in real life.

And now it is at risk.

In 1968, the United States ratified the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, committing the United States to a core legal protection known as non-refoulement. In plain terms, it prohibits returning refugees to persecution or torture. The United States later reinforced that obligation by ratifying the Convention Against Torture in 1994, which separately bars returning anyone to torture, regardless of immigration status.

That promise is not symbolic; it is codified in U.S. law. If a person has a well-founded fear of persecution or torture, the government is legally barred from returning them. The exceptions are narrow and require due process.

The treaty imposes additional obligations. People may not be punished solely for seeking safety, and detention is permitted only when necessary and subject to judicial review.

A treaty is only as strong as the system that enforces it. U.S. law and international human rights law agree on a basic point: The promise not to return someone to persecution or torture has meaning only if people are given a genuine opportunity to seek protection. That requires access to asylum screening, individualized hearings and a functional legal process.

Non-refoulement is therefore not merely a rule about outcomes. It is what’s known as a process-dependent obligation. When the immigration system is pushed so far beyond capacity that individuals cannot meaningfully present their claims for protection, the United States risks violating its legal commitments. That risk exists even without intent, and even before anyone is actually removed, when access to asylum or fair process is undermined.

Immigration enforcement is an executive function, but it is defined and limited by Congress. Congress defines the system, sets limits, and implements treaty obligations. For non-self-executing treaties like the Refugee Protocol, it is Congress, not the president that must give them legal effect. Without clear laws and oversight, treaty commitments risk being undermined by unilateral executive action.

The risk is no longer theoretical; three executive actions are now compounding decades of immigration system dysfunction and placing the United States at risk of violating its treaty obligations.

First, the federal government is rapidly expanding large-scale immigration enforcement.

In Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security has deployed at least 3,000 federal immigration agents in what state and city officials describe in court filings as a sweeping operation. Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have sued DHS alleging constitutional violations, including excessive force, warrantless arrests, and racial profiling.

The surge has coincided with the fatal shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, an autopsy-ruled homicide of a Cuban immigrant held by ICE in Texas, and documented abuse in overcrowded detention facilities. While these incidents differ in cause and context, they illustrate systemic stresses created by this administration’s immigration enforcement approach and raise questions regarding compliance with constitutional laws.

This is not an argument against immigration enforcement, but an argument against enforcement approaches that outpace due process and strain the very systems responsible for ensuring lawful removals. When enforcement overwhelms courts, attorneys, and detention capacity, the risk of refoulement rises sharply. That procedural failure is illustrated by the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite a standing court order barring his removal. It is also illustrated by the detention of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, asylum seekers with active pending cases who are protected under both international and federal law.

Second, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has begun reopening settled refugee cases at scale.

In November, USCIS announced a review of refugees admitted between 2021 and 2025. On Jan. 9, it launched an operation targeting already-vetted and resettled refugees for what it terms “intensive verification.”

The initial focus is on 5,600 people in Minnesota who remain in refugee status while awaiting green cards. Resettlement agencies report that refugee families, including children, have been detained, separated and transferred out of state without access to counsel.

At the same time, a new USCIS policy is effectively preventing refugees from adjusting to lawful permanent resident status, undermining the requirements of the 1967 Protocol.

Under federal law, refugee determinations are made on a case-by-case basis and are considered settled unless the government proves fraud, material misrepresentation or a national security risk. The government must submit evidence and follow established legal procedures. To date, the administration has not pointed to any systemic failure in the refugee screening process, demonstrated patterns of fraud or any national security lapse that would justify reopening cases at this scale.

Courts have repeatedly held under administrative law that agencies must respect reliance interests and cannot reverse settled determinations without reasoned explanation, evidence and procedural safeguards. Large-scale reopenings of settled refugee cases are therefore legally vulnerable to challenge.

Third, the administration is moving to normalize denaturalization, the stripping of American citizenship.

On June 11, 2025, the Department of Justice instructed its attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings,” authorizing pursuit of any case officials deem “sufficiently important” and, according to internal guidance, setting targets of up to 100-200 denaturalization cases per month, a scale without modern precedent.

Denaturalization is an extraordinary remedy. It can occur only through federal court and only after the government meets a very high evidentiary standard, a process that typically takes years. Treating it as routine fraud enforcement transforms the nature of citizenship itself.

For refugees and asylees who later naturalize, citizenship is intended to be the final safeguard against return to persecution. Once revoked, a person becomes deportable and subject to the United States’ non-refoulement obligations. Even where citizenship is revoked for fraud, that determination does not resolve the separate legal question of whether removal would expose a person to persecution or torture, which requires its own evidentiary showing and individualized assessment under U.S. law. By expanding the pool of people subject to removal without clarifying evidentiary standards or selection criteria, the administration is placing new pressure on the courts and potentially re-exposing individuals to the very harms citizenship is meant to prevent.

The constitutional concern is not the existence of denaturalization authority, but its transformation from a rare remedy into a volume-driven enforcement tool.

Taken together, these actions reflect an executive branch pushing against judicial limits and setting the stage for a surge of constitutional challenges and denaturalization proceedings in federal court. At the same time, current executive enforcement approaches are overextending a federal immigration system carrying roughly 3.4 million immigration cases, a volume that strains due process and protective treaty compliance. When courts cannot hear claims in time, or access to counsel collapses under volume, non-refoulement is at serious risk of being violated in practice even if it remains intact on paper, a risk heightened as enforcement mechanisms grow more complex and removal pathways more indirect.

Congress exists to restrain executive power. Instead, it has underfunded immigration and federal courts through appropriations and largely abandoned its oversight role, leaving the judiciary to absorb the fallout of executive action under mounting capacity constraints.

When the system falters, the consequences do not remain in Washington. Raids happen in neighborhoods. Detentions overwhelm county jails. Arrests unfold on city streets. Requiring governors, mayors, police chiefs, judges, and local leaders to manage the fallout from federal decisions they did not make and congressional inaction they did not choose.

Some of these actions have already resulted in documented violations of court orders, statutory protections, and constitutional limits. Others are placing the system under conditions where further violations are not speculative but structurally inevitable.

The question now facing the country is simple: Will executive power remain bound by the Constitution, and will the United States honor its legal commitments at home and abroad?

This question cannot be answered by the courts alone. It requires a Congress willing to reclaim its constitutional authority before executive power hardens into unchecked rule. The Constitution is not a backdrop. It’s an active constraint that requires maintenance. As James Madison warned, the accumulation of power in a single branch of government is the definition of tyranny.

For constituents, this isn’t abstract. Members of Congress decide how many immigration judges are hired; whether DHS is meaningfully overseen; and whether agencies can reopen settled refugee cases without clear statutory limits. When those guardrails fail, treaty protections fail with them. Voters should press their representatives to explain how a system Congress designed became incapable of carrying out the law Congress enacted.

That means demanding oversight hearings on Homeland Security enforcement practices, statutory limits on post-admission refugee case reopenings, clear protections against routine denaturalization, and appropriations sufficient to restore due process in the immigration system.

Minnesota once met refugees at the airport with flags and handmade signs. We met them with coats, stocked fridges, and open doors. We told them that even in the coldest winters, they would not be alone.

That is the Minnesota they came to, and the Minnesota I remember.

That same Minnesota stands in the cold today, patrolling school drop-off points to protect children, delivering food to neighbors, and standing between fear and families as federal agents sweep through residential streets.

Minnesota kept its word.

Now the federal government must honor its law.

The Minnesota Reformer is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping Minnesotans informed and unearthing stories other outlets can’t or won’t tell..