Donald Trump’s plan to deport over 500,000 migrants has been temporarily blocked by a judge appointed by Barack Obama. His administration now cannot immediately strip these people of their deportation protections and work permits that were handed out under Joe Biden.
The CHNV parole programme allowed citizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and their immediate family members to live and work in the US for up to two years if someone in the country agreed to financially support them. A total of 30,000 migrants were allowed in from those countries every month, leading to an influx of roughly 532,000 thousands. Mr Trump told these people to deport themselves by April 24 or face arrest and deportation by immigration agents.
However, this has been blocked by US District Court Judge Indira Talwani, appointed by President Obama in 2013.
She suspended the deportation warnings and stopped officials from revoking the immigrants’ legal protection.
She wrote: “Early termination, without any case-by-case justification, of legal status for noncitizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully undermines the rule of law.”
The Boston federal district court judge argued that immigrants in the programme who are in the country legally now face an option of “fleeing the country” or staying and “risk losing everything”.
CHNV was credited with partially reducing the number of illegal crossings into the US, but faced criticism from Republican states, which argued that the parole authority did not have the power to admit such a large number of people.
The government’s lawyer, Brian Ward, argued in court that ending the programme doesn’t mean that individuals couldn’t be considered for other immigration programmes.
He also said the government wouldn’t prioritise them for deportation – something Talwani questioned, given they could be arrested if they happened to go to the hospital or were involved in a car accident.
When Mr Trump once again took office in January, he immediately paused the programme and tried to dismantle similar parole-based immigration policies, despite this exceeding the president’s power.
This comes after a federal judge in California stopped the Trump administration from scrapping a Temporary Protected Status policy that protects over 350,000 Venezuelans from being deported.