Trump Revokes Temporary Status Of 530,000 Migrants, Set To Trigger Mass Deportations

The Donald Trump administration has announced that it will revoke legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in about a month.

The order applies to about 5,32,000 people from these four countries who have been coming to the United States since October 2022. They arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the US. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.

The Department of Homeland Security cut short a two-year “parole” programme known as CHNV under former President Joe Biden, allowing migrants to obtain work permits to live and work in the US, according to The Guardian. It follows an earlier Trump administration decision to end what it called the “broad abuse” of the humanitarian parole, a long-standing legal tool president have used to allow people from countries where there’s war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the US.

During his election campaign, President Trump promised to deport millions of people who are in the US illegally, and as president he has been also ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the US and to stay.

What Is The ‘Humanitarian Parole’ Programme?
Before the new order, the beneficiaries of the program could stay in the US until their parole expires, although the administration had stopped processing their applications for asylum, visas and other requests that might allow them to remain longer. The administration decision has already been challenged in federal courts.

A group of American citizens and immigrants sued the Trump administration for ending humanitarian parole and seeks to reinstate the programs for the four nationalities.

The Biden administration allowed up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries to come to the United States for two years with eligibility to work. It persuaded Mexico to take back the same number from those countries because the US could deport few, if any, to their homes.

Cuba generally accepted about one deportation flight a month, while Venezuela and Nicaragua refused to take any. All three are US adversaries. Haiti accepted many deportation flights, especially after a surge of migrants from the Caribbean country in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas, in 2021. But Haiti has been in constant turmoil, hampering US efforts.

The CHNV programme was a part of the Biden administration’s approach to encourage people to come through new legal channels while cracking down on those who crossed the border illegally.

What Does The New Policy Entail?
Under the new policy laid out under Trump’s government, parolees must depart before their parole termination date if they have no lawful basis to stay in the US. “Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status,” said the Homeland Security Department.

The decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status.

Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, one of the organisations that filed a lawsuit against the decision, called this action “reckless, cruel and counterproductive”, which will cause “needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country”.

This came after Trump said earlier this month that he would decide to strip the parole status of some 240,000 Ukrainians who have fled to the US during the conflict with Russia. Such a move would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under Biden’s administration and potentially put them on a fast-track to deportation.

Meanwhile, in another step in its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has also ended a contract that provides legal help to migrant children entering the country without a parent or guardian, fuelling concerns that children would be forced to navigate the complex legal system alone.