A federal judge said Thursday she intends to block the Trump administration from terminating temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—marking a critical moment in the ongoing legal battle over humanitarian parole programs.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, presiding in Boston, stated that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had misapplied the law in its decision to revoke a two-year parole period initially granted to these migrants under President Joe Biden’s administration.
The judge emphasized that the relevant immigration statute was meant to apply to those who entered the U.S. illegally, not to those who were lawfully admitted under parole.
“What you’re prioritizing is not people coming over the border but the people who followed the rules,” Talwani remarked during Thursday’s hearing.
The Trump administration’s move, formalized in a Federal Register notice last month, would have rendered nearly 450,000 people eligible for expedited deportation as early as April 24. Immigrant rights advocates quickly filed suit, accusing the government of unlawfully ending the Biden-era parole programs.
Attorney Laura Flores-Perilla of the Justice Action Center, representing the plaintiffs, praised the judge’s stance and urged swift finalization of the decision. “The stakes are quite high,” she told reporters. “These are human lives at stake, and the urgency is very much there.”
Biden’s administration launched the parole program for Venezuelans in 2022, later expanding it to Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans in 2023 to address the humanitarian crisis and mounting illegal immigration from those regions.
During the hearing, DOJ attorney Brian Ward argued that the parole programs were always discretionary and did not require DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to conduct individualized revocations.
Neither DHS nor the Department of Justice immediately responded to requests for comment.
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