Thousands of Cubans, other migrants face deportation if judge doesn’t issue stay
A federal judge in Boston is expected to decide as early as Thursday whether to stop the Trump administration’s deportations of more than half-a-million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who arrived in the United States under a Biden-era humanitarian parole program.
Unless the judge puts the Trump administration’s order to cancel the parole program on hold, deportation protections and work permits will shut down on April 24, leaving the massive group of Caribbean and Latin American immigrants with no legal status in the United States and no recourse to fight their deportations.
Many have been living and working in South Florida after being sponsored by relatives to come to the United States to apply for asylum or other protections under the two-year parole program instead of trying to get in through the U.S.-Mexico border, where a migrant crisis erupted during the Biden administration’s watch.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani is holding a hearing Thursday on whether to issue a preliminary injunction that would halt Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s cancellation order for the program — known as CHNV for the initials of the nationalities affected — and allow a dozen plaintiffs to pursue their class-action lawsuit seeking to keep the parole program and protections intact.
“If the Secretary’s action is allowed to take effect, hundreds of thousands of law-abiding and hardworking non-citizens across the country will be rendered removable and legally unemployable, and all on the same day in late April, inflicting irreparable injury on a breathtaking scale,” lawyers for the paroled immigrants wrote in a court filing.
Lawyers for the Trump administration expressed opposition to an injunction, saying the paroled immigrants have no legal right to challenge the Homeland Security secretary’s decision and the courts have no authority to dictate policy to top immigration officials.
“Given that the Secretary has determined that the CHNV parole program should no longer exist because there is no longer an urgent humanitarian reason or significant public benefit to support the parole program, it makes sense to conclude that parole should be terminated for the aliens granted parole under that program,” government lawyers wrote in a court filing on Tuesday.
The clock is ticking as the court drama unfolds this week: Noem’s order takes effect 30 days after a notice was published March 25 in the Federal Register on the program.
As of December 2024, the last full month Biden was in office, a total of 531,690 people had come through the parole program. That includes 110,240 Cubans, 211,040 Haitians, 93,070 Nicaraguans, and 117,330 Venezuelans who flew into U.S. airports.
After the 30-day window closes, Homeland Security can deport anyone without a lawful basis to remain in the U.S. unless the federal judge in Boston puts the brakes on everything while the group’s lawsuit proceeds.
The people affected by Homeland Security’s decision come from the region’s most troubled countries. In Cuba, the island remains under a repressive dictatorship and Cubans are experiencing repeated blackouts and shortages of food and medicine. In Haiti, there hasn’t been a general election in nearly a decade; more than a million have been displaced by armed gang violence and the country’s volatile capital is on the verge of collapse. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, repressive regimes have also prompted a humanitarian crisis that has forced millions to flee.
President Joe Biden created the parole program so people from the four countries would have a new legal avenue to come to the U.S for two years, in an attempt to reduce irregular migration at the southwest border. People could use the program to come to the U.S. as long as they had a financial sponsor here, could arrange for their airfare, and passed health and background checks. About 30,000 people a month were coming to the U.S. under the program since it began in January 2023.
But the Trump administration said the program does not align with the president’s foreign policy and did not have much impact on curbing the flow of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Rather, officials argue, the program added to the immigration backlogs because 75,000 of the people who came on the parole program have applied for asylum. The program also created pressures at airports — Florida received 80% of the arriving migrants, the administration said.
“These programs do not serve a significant public benefit, are not necessary to reduce levels of illegal immigration, did not sufficiently mitigate the domestic effects of illegal immigration, are not serving their intended purposes, and are inconsistent with the Administration’s foreign policy goals,” the Federal Register notice says.
“The need to break the ‘vicious cycle’ of unlawful immigration supports this [Homeland Security] action to terminate the CHNV parole programs in favor of new presidential directives that address the demand for enhanced border security,” the notice added.
The end of the parole program is part of Trump’s crackdown on legal immigration paths that allow people to temporarily come to the U.S. Republicans also criticized the parole program as an overreach and abuse of executive presidential power. But past Democratic and Republican presidents have used their parole authorities to allow people from countries in turmoil to come to the United States, including Soviet and Vietnamese citizens.
Homeland Security intends to prioritize for deportation those who have not, prior to the publication of the Federal Registry notice, properly filed a request for an immigration benefit to remain lawfully in the U.S. This includes applying for adjustment of status, asylum or Temporary Protected Status.
Migrants are being urged to “self-deport” and to report their departure once outside the U.S. via the Customs and Border Protection Home mobile app. More information on voluntarily self-deporting is available at https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/home
This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 10:51 AM.
