The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that it would revoke the temporary legal status of more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans welcomed into the US under a Biden-era sponsorship process, according to a notice posted to the Federal Register and signed by the homeland security chief Kristi Noem.
The order cuts short a two-year “parole” program – known as CHNV – under Joe Biden that allowed 532,000 people who had arrived in the US since October 2022 with financial sponsors to obtain two-year work permits to live and work in the US. Noem’s notice said they will lose their legal status on 24 April.
The new policy affects people who are already in the US and who came under the humanitarian parole program. It follows an earlier Trump administration decision to end what it called the “broad abuse” of the humanitarian parole, a long-standing legal tool presidents have used to allow people from countries where there is war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the US.
During his campaign, Donald Trump promised to deport millions of people who are in the US illegally, and as president he has also been ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the US and to stay.
Under the new policy, parolees must depart before their parole termination date if they have no lawful basis to stay in the US.
“Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status,” DHS said.
Trump said on 6 March that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who have fled to the US during the conflict with Russia. Trump’s remarks came in response to a Reuters report that said his administration planned to revoke the status for Ukrainians as soon as April.
Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. Diplomatic and political relations between the four countries and the United States have been strained.
The new legal pathways came as Biden tried to clamp down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.
The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status.
The order has already been challenged in federal courts. A group of American citizens and immigrants sued the Trump administration for ending humanitarian parole and are seeking to reinstate the programs for people of the four nationalities.
Lawyers and activists raised their voices to denounce the government’s decision.
Friday’s action is “going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country”, said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit at the end of February. She called it “reckless, cruel and counterproductive”.
