A Boston federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of more than half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans later this month.
The Trump administration sought to collectively terminate their legal status on April 24. But U.S. District of Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani issued an emergency stay Monday night, ruling that migrants who came in legally through the CHNV humanitarian parole program will hold onto their status until it was supposed to end.
“While Defendants are correct that the Secretary’s discretion in this area is broad, their conclusion that the Secretary’s actions are wholly shielded from judicial review is incorrect,” Talwani wrote.
People who have this legal status can continue to work and live in the United States without deportation worries until their original date of status ends. That specific date varies depending on when they first received the status: It is two years after the official issuance date.
“We saw the administration trying to completely pull the rug under their feet, turning them undocumented and then put them on a pipeline for expedite removal. It is inhumane. And it is not within the law,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of plaintiff organization Haitian Bridge Alliance.
The Trump administration didn’t respond to requests for comment and can appeal the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
Talwani said the immediate impact of shortening the parole would cause their “lawful status in the United States to lapse early” causing plaintiffs to be faced with two “unfavorable options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings. If Plaintiffs leave the country on their own, they will face dangers in their native countries.”
As of December 2024, over 532,000 people from those countries came into the United States after applying for the humanitarian relief from their home countries, going through background checks and acquiring a U.S. citizen sponsor.
The decision doesn’t apply to other litigants in the case, who include Ukrainians displaced by the war with Russia and Afghans fleeing the newly resurgent Taliban.
Still, it appears parolees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have few options for how to legally stay in the United States after their two-year stint ends. The Trump administration continues to have an indefinite hold in processing applications for other parole benefits, programs that include permanent residence, asylum and temporary protected status. Plaintiffs are challenging the legality of that.
Talwani has not made a decision on this part of the case yet.
“The government was basically planning a triple whammy,” said Anwen Hughes, the director of legal strategy at Human Rights First’s Refugee Programs division. “Where they were going to terminate people’s parole, block the adjudication of applications for more permanent status that people had filed and do all of this in order to then try to remove them from the United States without giving them the right to a hearing before an immigration judge.”
