Trump moves to end refugee resettlement and parole for Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans
President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive actions on immigration in his first hours in office on Monday, suspending refugee resettlement, reinstating a policy requiring migrants at the U.S. southern border to remain in Mexico while they await their court appearances and terminating a parole program that provided another legal pathway to entry for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
The CHNV parole program had allowed more than 530,000 migrants from the four countries to temporarily migrate to the United States throughout the Biden administration through a sort of “digital queue,” called the CBP One app. The app, overall, allowed more than 1 million individuals to enter by also requesting immigration appointments electronically at the U.S. southern border with Mexico. The app was created in an attempt to dissuade migrants from arriving in person at the border for processing.
In an executive order, released by the White House, Trump ordered that the Department of Homeland Security “cease using the ‘CBP One’ application as a method of paroling or facilitating the entry of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the United States,” and “terminate all categorical parole programs that are contrary to the policies of the United States established in my Executive Orders, including the program known as the ‘Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.’”
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Shortly after Trump took the oath of office, the website for CBP One was listed as “no longer available,” and tens of thousands of existing appointments were listed as “cancelled.” The CHNV website has also been taken down.
Both the CHNV and “Remain in Mexico” programs have been the subject of years of litigation, which is likely to continue as Trump takes office.
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In his inaugural address, the president said he would send troops to the U.S. southern border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” and would designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. According to U.S. Border Patrol, the number of attempted border crossings in December was at its lowest point since 2019.
Nevertheless, the president declared a national emergency at the southern border in another executive action on Monday. The new White House also said in a statement that the president had suspended refugee resettlement, “after communities were forced to house large and unsustainable populations of migrants, straining community safety and resources.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2025 at 1:03 PM.
