It was a church gathering so they prayed before they ate. They prayed even more after they ate.
They prayed for the handful of refugees in their midst and others they know by name who have been taken or live in fear of being taken.
They prayed for thousands of refugee families in their city and millions across the country who fled violence, poverty and persecution only to have it follow them to America.
They prayed for countless children who don’t know the politics of fear, anger and retribution, only that masked, armed men are taking their mothers and fathers away.
“We are desperate for your prayers,” Melissa Odotei told several dozen people who attended last week’s prayer service in the fellowship hall at Second Baptist Church.
Odotei is associate director of the Memphis office of World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization that helps victims of war, famine, poverty and persecution find refuge in America.
“These refugees came to us through appropriate and legal processes, but the rules have been changed,” Odotei said. “Now everybody who wasn’t born in the U.S. is vulnerable. Everybody.”
Everybody includes about 4,400 refugee families in Memphis now subject to the Trump administration’s latest strategy to try to deport a million people a year by turning the documented into the undocumented..
“We’re having to have conversations with anyone who wasn’t born in the U.S. to say this is what’s supposed to happen, but we can no longer promise you that is what will happen,” Odotei said.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) calls it Operation Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening, or Operation PARRIS.
It was launched in early January in Minneapolis. ICE agents were ordered to round up and “review” 5,600 refugees who were lawfully admitted to the U.S. and resettled in Minnesota during the Biden administration.
“The refugee resettlement system we’ve built as Americans, though imperfect, was supposed to hold to certain ideals,” Odotei said. “All that has been shattered.”
Operation PARRIS was the result of a November DHS memo that ordered “a comprehensive review and potential re-interview of over 200,000 Biden-era refugees” nationwide. “If the review finds ineligibility, refugee status may be revoked, leading to possible removal from the U.S.”
The American Immigration Lawyers Association objected. “This is a significant and unprecedented large-scale effort to review the cases of people whom the U.S. government has already resettled in the United States after an extensive and thorough adjudication and review process,” the association declared last month.
World Relief, which was founded in 1944 by the National Association of Evangelicals, also objected. “These (refugees) are not the ‘worst of the worst;’ these are innocent children and families who fled the worst wars and persecution imaginable, who were invited by the American people to become Americans under the terms of American law,” Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief, said in a statement last month. “ICE must be held accountable, and this operation must cease.”
In January, ICE agents in Minnesota arrested more than 100 refugees with no criminal record. They were handcuffed or shackled and flown, with or without their children, to detention centers in Texas where they were confined to tiny, cold cells and interrogated.
Among them was Ta Eh Doh Lah, a mother of four from Myanmar. She is an ethnic Karen, a persecuted Christian minority. She was breastfeeding her five-month-old baby and awaiting specialized heart care when ICE agents took her from her apartment Jan. 10.
“There is something particularly craven about transferring a nursing refugee mother out-of-state,” wrote U.S. Dist. Judge Michael Davis, who noted that Lah has no criminal record and had complied fully with U.S. immigration law. On Jan. 23, the judge ruled that Lah’s detention was unlawful and ordered her immediate return to Minnesota and release from custody.
A week later, another federal judge blocked “Operation PARRIS” in Minnesota, finding that it unlawfully targeted and detained legally admitted refugees in violation of federal law and the Constitution.
U.S. Dist. Judge John Tunheim ordered DHS to release and return to Minnesota the more than 100 refugees who were detained. The judge ruled that DHS could continue to reinspect refugees admitted during the Biden administration “without arresting and detaining refugees.”
“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully — and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries,” the judge wrote. “At its best, America serves as a haven of individual liberties in a world too often full of tyranny and cruelty. We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos.”
The Trump administration plans to appeal the order. “We look forward to being vindicated in court,” a DHS official told The New York Times.
Minnesota isn’t the only state where legally resettled refugees are being arrested and detained. The Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on Biden-era refugees began more than a year ago.
On the first day of Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order suspending the entry of all refugees into the U.S. and freezing all pending applications for refugee status and asylum with USRAP.
The U.S. Refugee Assistance Program, or USRAP, was a product of the 1980 Refugee Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Carter. The law formalized the refugee resettlement process and set annual ceilings on the number of refugees who could be admitted.
It also aligned U.S. law with the United Nations’ definition of a refugee as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their own country because of a “well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.”
Since 1980, the U.S. has resettled more than 3.3 million refugees.
Applicants are referred by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, or recognized humanitarian aid organizations.
They undergo extensive screening and vetting before they are approved to travel to the U.S. That includes biographic and biometric security checks conducted by multiple U.S. national security and intelligence agencies, as well as in-person interviews with U.S. immigration officers.
Refugees who are admitted to the U.S. can be granted permanent residency within five years.
USRAP works with governmental and nongovernmental organizations to identify, resettle and assist refugees. In Memphis, those organizations include World Relief, Refugee Memphis, and Bethany Christian Services.
Early last year, the Trump administration abruptly terminated all contracts with resettlement agencies, and ordered the agencies to stop providing services to refugees who had recently arrived in the U.S.
Last summer, Congress passed, and Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” It included this provision: “Refugees who have not yet obtained permanent residence no longer qualify for public benefits, including Medicaid, Medicare, and food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).”
World Relief and other agencies that help refugees have had to cut staff and support services.
“We’ve been scrambling, trying to work with churches and other groups to help our refugees find safe housing, healthcare, jobs, daycare, English classes,” Odotei said. “And now they are being dehumanized and re-traumatized.”
The Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on Biden-era refugees has targeted those from several countries, including Somalia, Venezuela and Afghanistan.
In the summer of 2021, the Biden administration evacuated approximately 80,000 Afghans as U.S. troops were being withdrawn after a decade of war. “I want to thank these brave Afghans for standing with the United States, and today, I am proud to say to them: ‘Welcome home,’” Biden said.
Two years later, the Biden administration introduced a “Family Reunification for Afghans” program. It allowed Afghans already here to sponsor their family members to come to the U.S. as refugees. Another 120,000 Afghans were permitted to enter the U.S. on “parole” and were shielded from deportation.
The Trump administration eliminated the shield. “We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden,” Trump said in November after an Afghan man was identified as the suspected shooter of two National Guard officers in Washington.
Trump halted the processing of all immigration applications (including those for asylum) from Afghan nationals “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”
He ordered ICE agents to “review” the cases of Afghans who entered the country after the 2021 withdrawal of all U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. “We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump said Nov. 28 from his resort in Florida.
That order impacted tens of thousands of Afghan refugees across the country.
“The Trump administration is making legal people illegal and then treating them like criminals,” said Andre Mann, a Raleigh, N.C., businessman who worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan. Mann has worked with various churches and Christian humanitarian organizations to rescue and resettle more than 1,400 refugees from Afghanistan.
Last April, Afghan refugees in Raleigh began receiving letters from DHS telling them to leave the country. “If you do not depart from the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States,” the letter said.
Last May, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem declared that it was safe for refugees to return to Taliban-led Afghanistan. She terminated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of Afghans.
“We have challenged that,” Mann said. “The Taliban is persecuting anyone who doesn’t follow its version of Islam. And they’re taking revenge on anyone with ties to America. Their lives are at risk if they are forced to return to Afghanistan.”
Mann said immigration judges, who work for Trump’s Justice Department not the independent judiciary, are denying nearly all asylum applications from Afghan refugees.
One refugee who couldn’t read English signed his own self-deportation form after he was detained.
“He thought he was signing something to get his money and belongings back from ICE,” Mann said. “Within hours, he was calling me in hiding from the Taliban.”
Another refugee was denied asylum because he came to the U.S. from Brazil, one of the first nations to offer humanitarian visas for Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
“Brazil only provided temporary visas to Afghan refugees, but the government told the judge inaccurately that the man had a permanent visa in Brazil,” Mann said.
Another refugee was denied asylum because he converted to Christianity.
“The judge said becoming a Christian was a choice and the refugee should have known the consequences of that choice,” Mann said. “That’s against every principle of who we are in America.”
The Americans who gathered at Second Baptist Church last week spent a lot of time praying.
“Help us to reconcile the breakdown of trust that’s driven by fear and manufactured hatred of others,” prayed Rev. Dr. Stephen Cook, pastor of Second Baptist Church. “Help us to see all our neighbors as sisters and brothers, no matter how they appear.”
They prayed for Latif who is pastor of Christ Community Afghan Church in Memphis. He has a Permanent Resident Card and his wife is a U.S. citizen.
They prayed for Qudratullah, Latif’s brother-in-law, who came to Memphis in 2023. He was taken in early December while he walked his two sons, ages 5 and 9, to school in Cordova. He spent the next six weeks with his wife, Khadija, and their boys in a federal detention center in Dilley, Texas. They were released last late month and allowed to return to Memphis. The parents are wearing ankle monitors and must check-in with ICE in person every other week.
They prayed for Ali, a chicken farmer who fled the Taliban and came to Memphis in 2023. Last December, he went to a police station in Bartlett to pay a speeding ticket. The police notified ICE who arrested Ali and sent him to a federal detention center in Louisiana.
An immigration judge granted him asylum last month and he was released.
They prayed for Sakina, a 21-year-old woman who remains in ICE custody while she appeals a judge’s order that she be deported. Sakina, her parents and two brothers, both under 18, surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol in September and asked for asylum. They were on their way to Memphis to join her two older brothers who came here in 2022. Instead, they were sent to a federal detention center in Laredo, Texas.
Eventually, everyone was released except Sakina.
They prayed for Jalaly, a 31-year-old snow ski champion who came to Memphis in 2024 to join the Afghan church. He went to a regularly scheduled immigration check-in last month and was arrested and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. Last Friday, an immigration judge ordered that Jalaly be deported to Brazil.
They also prayed for each other. “I’m so angry, but it’s a righteous anger,” Odotei told the folks at Second Baptist Church. “I’m praying for help in how I direct that anger in a way that is profitable and meaningful for those that have been oppressed, marginalized.”
