Trump administration to revoke legal status for 532,000 migrants

By Victor Nava (NEW YORK POST), U.S., Mar 22: The Trump administration will revoke legal protections that allowed more than 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) migrants to enter the US under a Biden-era “humanitarian parole” program. 

Work permits and deportation protections for roughly 532,000 people from the four nations will be terminated on April 24, according to a notice posted by the Department of Homeland Security in the Federal Register and set to be published on March 25. 

“Parolees without a lawful basis to remain in the United States following this termination of the CHNV parole programs must depart the United States before their parole termination date,” the notice states. 

DHS plans to “remove promptly aliens who entered the United States under the CHNV parole programs who do not depart the United States before their parole termination date and do not have any lawful basis to remain in the United States.” 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is revoking legal protections because she “has concluded that neither urgent humanitarian reasons nor significant public benefit warrants the continued presence of aliens paroled under the CHNV programs and the purposes of such parole therefore have been served,” according to the notice. 

The Biden administration launched the parole program in October 2022. 

It allowed foreign nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly into the US and stay and work for up to two years, provided they could obtain a sponsor living in the country.

The program, plagued by rampant fraud, was an attempt by the Biden administration to drive down illegal immigration during record surges at the border.

In July 2024, the Biden administration temporarily paused the program after an internal review found that thousands of sponsors for the migrants were listing fake social security numbers or phone numbers and using the same physical address for thousands of parole applications.  

“Some 100 addresses were listed on over 19,000 forms,” a US Citizenship and Immigration Services review found, and “many applications were submitted by the same IP address.”

In October 2024, the Biden administration barred migrants enrolled in the program from extending their temporary legal status.

President Trump swiftly ended the program on his first day in office, stopping any new applications from being submitted. 

Last month, a group of parole beneficiaries and sponsors and the Haitian Bridge Alliance — an immigrant rights group — sued the Trump administration over the program’s termination, challenging its legal authority to dismantle “established and Congressionally authorized pathways to the United States” and its attempts to “block” parolees “from seeking alternate legal statuses created and authorized by Congress.” 

“Let’s be clear: Suddenly revoking the lawful status of hundreds of thousands of CHNV humanitarian parole recipients is going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country,” Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrants rights group, said in a statement Friday.  

“The Administration’s targeting of this successful and popular process — one of the last remaining safe and lawful pathways — is reckless, cruel and counterproductive,” she argued, adding that the Trump administration is “breaking a commitment the federal government made to the hundreds of thousands of American sponsors and beneficiaries who did everything the government asked of them to participate.”

A DHS spokesperson said the CHNV migrants allowed into the US under former President Joe Biden were “loosely vetted” and “undercut American workers.” 

“The previous administration lied to America,” the spokesperson said in a statement, according to Newsweek.

“They allowed more than half a million loosely vetted aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their immediate family members to enter the United States through these disastrous parole programs; granted them opportunities to compete for American jobs and undercut American workers; forced career civil servants to promote the programs even when fraud was identified; and then blamed Republicans in Congress for the chaos that ensued and the crime that followed.”