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On March 25, the Department of Homeland Security announced in the federal register that it had revoked humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of migrants legally living in the United States under the Parole Program (CHNV) in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In early April, parolees began receiving individual letters, notifying them that their permission to stay and work legally in the United States had been revoked prematurely before their two-year stay ended. As of April 24th, all remaining parole grants under CHNV will be void. Anyone who had a work permit due to that parole would lose them.
The Trump administration has shown hostility to most parole programs created or expanded by former President Joe Biden. This shows as a way to expand the legal routes available for those seeking to come to the United States, instead of encouraging them to migrate irregularly. However, the CHNV program came for specific criticism, particularly after the Biden administration suspended its parole request ruling for several weeks last summer to investigate allegations of fraud in the program.
As we explained, those who came to the US under CHNV could, if eligible, look for another form of legal status upon their arrival. It makes it impossible to communicate the number of people currently relying on CHNV parole for protection from deportation. However, calculations of some envelopes based on the Office of Homeland Security Statistical Data (which runs until November 2024) suggest that there are around 195,000 people with current parole grants who were not eligible to apply for temporary protection status under the CHNV or who were not eligible to adjust to permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act. (Some of those people may have used USCIS to apply for asylum, which allows them to live and work in the United States while the application is pending.)
However, thanks to another decision by the Trump administration, Venezuelans who arrived under the CHNV and applied for TPS in 2023 are at risk of losing their TPS. Last week, the judge ordered the designation of the TPS from sunset on April 7, as originally announced, but the ruling could remain or be overturned.
And the CHNV termination itself is being challenged in court. Svitlana Doev filed in federal court in Massachusetts. Noem’s lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s widespread parole withdrawal, including CHNV. The plaintiff in that case is seeking an injunction on April 24th that would prevent the government from canceling parole for CHNV holders. There will be an oral discussion this week.
Of course, it is impossible to know how many CHNV recipients know that two years of protection is no longer two years. Many of them may live at addresses that are different from those that the federal government has filed. Even those who received the letter may not know that for Venezuelans there are cases where there are not many cases of two different courts. This is a huge amount of uncertainty for a program that had an assumption of selling points to promote predictability of arrival and departures rather than alternatives to fraudulent migration to the US.
Submitted below: Cuba, Haiti, parole
