Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans could face deportation from April 24th.
According to a federal registration notice, US President Donald Trump’s administration will revoke temporary legal status of 530,000 people, including US Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
The move, the latest expansion of Trump’s crackdown on immigration, will be in effect from April 24th, shortening the two-year “parole” given to immigrants under former President Joe Biden, allowing them to enter the country in the Air Force if they have our sponsors.
A group of American citizens and immigrants is suing the Trump administration to end humanitarian parole and seeking to revive programs of four nationalities.
Biden launched the Venezuelan parole entry program in 2022 and expanded to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023, with his administration working on high levels of undocumented immigration from those nationalities. The diplomatic and political ties between the four countries and the United States are tense.
The new legal route came when Biden tried to close illegal intersections at the US-Mexico border.
Campaigning on a strict anti-immigration line, Trump took immediate steps to step up enforcement after he took office, including banishing the record numbers of people living in the United States without official documents.
He argued that the legal entry parole program launched under his Democratic predecessor crossed the boundaries of federal law, and called for their firing on an executive order on January 20th.
His administration’s decision to strip half a million people of legal status from immigrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to stay in the United States.
It remains unclear whether the number of people who entered the country on parole now holds another form of protection or legal status.
In a notice scheduled to be officially made public on the federal registers Monday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said revoking parole status would make it easier to facilitate the fast truck deportation process known as “quick removal.”
“The Trump administration will break the commitment made to US immigrants and their sponsors and hundreds of thousands of other sponsors,” said Karen Tamlin, director of the Center for Judicial Action, Immigrants and the Center for Sponsored by Immigrants.
“The sudden revocation of the legal status of hundreds of thousands of CHNVs (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans) humanitarian paroles will cause unnecessary disruption and heartbreak for families and communities across the country,” she told AFP News Agency in a statement.
Nicolett Glaser, a California immigration lawyer, said the latest order would affect the “majority” of the 500,000 immigrants who entered the United States under the CHNV scheme. “Chaos is unrealistic,” she added to X.
On March 6, Trump also said he would “quickly” decide whether to strip the parole status of about 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the United States during the war with Russia.
Under Trump-era policies implemented in January, rapid removal can be applied to certain US immigrants within two years.
In the meantime, Venezuela has reached an agreement to resume repatriation flights for US immigrants, the Venezuelan government said in a statement on Saturday. “Moving is not a crime. We will not rest until someone comes back and saves the tempted brother in El Salvador,” the statement said.
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