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Federal judge blocks Trump from halting Biden-era migrant parole program

April 15, 2025 | | Print Article

A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked President Donald Trump’s revocation of the CHNV Parole program.

As previously reported, 530,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants were granted two-year “parole” under former President Joe Biden’s CHNV Parole program in late 2022.

Then last month Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem published a note to the Federal Register warning these half a million migrants that they had until April 24th to self-deport.

In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson defended the elimination of the program by arguing that the migrants allowed via CHNV were both “loosely vetted” and also undercutting American workers.

“The termination of the CHNV parole programs, and the termination of parole for those who exploited it, is a return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” they said.

Flash forward to Monday, when U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, blocked the administration from ending the program.

“If their parole status is allowed to lapse, Plaintiffs will be faced with two unfavorable options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings,” her ruling reads. “If Plaintiffs leave the country on their own, they will face dangers in their native countries, as set forth in their affidavits.”

“For some Plaintiffs, leaving will also cause family separation. Leaving may also mean Plaintiffs will have forfeited any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their APA claims, as leaving may moot those claims,” it continues.

Talwani also ruled that each parolee deserves an individual, case-by-case review instead of a broad ruling affecting thousands of people.

Pro-migrant groups celebrated the ruling.

“This ruling is a significant step toward justice for not only the hundreds of thousands of people who entered the U.S. through this important process, but for the American sponsors who welcomed them to their homes and communities,” Justice Action Center founder Karen Tumlin said in a statement.

“With this decision, so many people throughout the country will be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief,” she added.

Perhaps, but a report released last November by the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the CHNV program is an “unmitigated disaster” riddled with fraud.

“[T]he Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful CHNV program is plagued by so much fraud that DHS itself was forced to pause the program in July 2024,” the report reads.

“An internal DHS report on the CHNV parole program found, among other major problems with supporter applications, that ‘forms from those applying for the program included social security numbers, addresses[,] and phone numbers being used hundreds of times in some cases,’” the report continues.

According to Fox News, the fraud was extensive.

“100,948 forms were filled out by 3,218 serial sponsors—those whose number appears on 20 or more forms,” Fox News notes. “24 of the 1,000 most used numbers belonged to a dead person. Meanwhile, 100 physical addresses were used between 124 and 739 times on over 19,000 forms.”

Despite these findings, the Biden administration restarted CHNV just a month later, sparking outrage from congressional Republicans like House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark E. Green.

“It should come as no surprise that the Biden-Harris administration has rushed to restart its unlawful CHNV mass-parole scheme, despite the clear evidence of fraud permeating the program,” Green said in a statement at the time.

“The CHNV program, along with the use of the CBP One app at the Southwest border, has helped the president and his border czar play a massive shell game, encouraging otherwise-inadmissible aliens to simply cross at ports of entry instead of between them,” he added.

Vivek Saxena
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