A federal appeals court on Monday denied a request from president Donald Trump administration to proceed with revoking temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, and Cuba, dealing a legal setback to the administration’s immigration agenda.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, rejected the administration’s motion to stay a lower court ruling that blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending a two-year humanitarian parole program established under the Biden administration.
The program allows certain migrants to live and work legally in the United States on a temporary basis.
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In its decision, the three-judge panel—all appointees of Democratic presidents—found that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem had not demonstrated a “strong showing” that her attempt to rescind parole for these migrants would prevail on appeal.
The court’s ruling leaves in place an April 25 order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who determined that the agency’s broad termination of parole and work authorizations violated the requirement for individualized case assessments.
The parole program, introduced during President Joe Biden’s tenure, offered legal status to approximately 400,000 migrants from the four countries.
In March, DHS issued a notice in the Federal Register signaling its intention to end the program while litigation was ongoing, arguing that the secretary had the discretion to do so unilaterally.
The administration argued that the judge’s ruling was effectively compelling the government “to retain hundreds of thousands of aliens in the country against its will.” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin responded to the court’s decision by stating, “The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law to our immigration system.
No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”
Immigrant rights organizations, including the Justice Action Center, which brought the suit on behalf of affected migrants, hailed the ruling as a victory for lawful process and humanitarian protection.
“The court rightly recognized that this reckless and illegal effort to strip legal status from hundreds of thousands cannot proceed,” said Karen Tumlin, the center’s founder and lead counsel in the case.
The lawsuit also challenges the broader rollback of Biden-era humanitarian parole policies, which had provided temporary refuge to nationals of several countries including Ukraine and Afghanistan. Legal proceedings in the case remain ongoing.
The administration has not indicated whether it will seek to escalate the matter to the Supreme Court.
