By MICHAEL CASEY
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday will halt the Trump administration from ending a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to temporarily live in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani announced that she plans to issue a stay on the program, which was set to end later this month. The push to help more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans is part of a broader legal effort to protect nationals from Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries who are here legally.
During a hearing on the case, Talwani repeatedly questioned the government’s assertion for ending the program — namely that it has the power to do and that it was no longer serving its purpose. She argued that immigrants in the program who are here legally now face an option of “fleeing the country” or staying and “risk losing everything.”
“The nub of the problem here is that the secretary, in cutting short the parole period afforded to these individuals, has to have a reasoned decision,” Talwani said, adding that the explanation for ending the program was “based on an incorrect reading of the law.”
“There was a deal and now that deal has been undercut,” she added later in the hearing.
Last month, the administration revoked legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in 30 days. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24.
They arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the U.S. During that time, the beneficiaries needed to find other legal pathways if they wanted to stay in the U.S. Parole has been a temporary status.
President Donald Trump has been ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the U.S., implementing campaign promises to deport millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally.
Outside court, immigration advocates, including Guerline Jozef, founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Foundation, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said attacks on this program contradict the Trump administration’s strategy on immigration.
“We hear the narrative of people coming her illegally and the administration wanting to erase illegal immigration,” Jozef said. “But, we clearly see today that is not the case. Even those people who have legal status, are paying their taxes and working are under attack.”
Across the country, many immigrants in the CHNV parole program have been watching this case closely.
Cesar Baez was an activist of the political opposition in Venezuela, participating in street protests against the government. He feared for his life and left his country to come to the U.S. under the sponsorship of an American doctor. He arrived under the humanitarian parole program CHNV in December 2022 and, for the last year, he has been working as a producer at a media outlet in Washington.
He has applied for a working visa as another way to get legal status and has also requested asylum, but those processes have also been paused under the Trump administration.
For him, the judge’s announcement means hope.
“It is very important for me to have protections and not be removed to Venezuela,” said Baez, 24, in a telephone interview with the AP. “I have no doubt that if I set foot in the country, I would immediately be imprisoned.”
Zamora, a 34-year-old Cuban woman who asked to be identified only by her last name due to fears of being detained and deported, received the judge’s news as relief.
“I was terrified of being left without a work permit,” said Zamora, whose parole and work permit expire in September. “We are people who, in order to come here, have gone through several background checks, and the government take away our status as if we had been criminals and entered illegally.”
In motion ahead of the hearing, plaintiffs called the administration’s action “unprecedented” and said it would result in people losing their legal status and ability to work. The also called the move “contrary to law within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act,” which sets out the procedures that agencies have to follow when making rules.
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing and that the move by Homeland Security impacting immigrants in the CHNV program did not violate the Administrative Procedure Act. They also said that plaintiffs wouldn’t be able to demonstrate that termination of the program was unlawful.
The government’s lawyer, Brian Ward, also argued in court that ending the program doesn’t mean that individuals couldn’t be considered for other immigration programs. He also said the government wouldn’t prioritize them for deportation — something Talwani found suspect, given they could be arrested if they happened to go to the hospital or were involved in a car accident.
The end of temporary protections for these immigrants has generated little political blowback among Republicans other than three Cuban-American representatives from Florida who called for preventing the deportation of the Venezuelans affected. One of them, Rep. Maria Salazar of Miami, also joined about 200 congressional Democrats this week in cosponsoring a bill that would enable them to become lawful permanent residents.
Gisela Saloman contributed to this report from Miami.
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