News & Resources
On October 14, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security published an Interim Final Rule (IFR) that, effective immediately, sped up the government’s process to terminate refugee status by reducing refugees’ time to respond to Notices of Intent to Terminate their Refugee Status from thirty to ten days. Any refugee who does not respond within the ten-day period will have their refugee status terminated upon expiration of the deadline.
In the Explainer below, IRAP answers key questions, provides legal background, and highlights some of the errors in the government’s attempts to justify the change.
For impacted communities, we recommend consulting and sharing IRAP’s legal information resources on refugee detention and revetting, which are being updated to reflect the rule changes and include guides in English, Amharic, Arabic, Dari/Farsi, French, Haitian Kreyol, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tigrinya, and Ukrainian, as well as information on requesting legal assistance.
You can view and download the Explainer here or below.
This resource is intended for a legal practitioner and legal advocacy audience; it is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
This resource was published on October 14, 2026. It does not reflect any legal changes since last updates. Please see IRAP’s Legal Practitioner Resources pagefor our latest resources and additional information for legal practitioners.
If you would like to receive email alerts about IRAP’s legal practitioner resources, please sign up here.
Please note that the embedded document will only be visible if cookies are enabled on your browser. However, the linked document above should be available to all users.
