In a Boston courtroom, the fate of over 400,000 migrants teetered on a legal tightrope, as federal judges revisited a question that cuts to the core of immigration authority: Can a president unilaterally cancel protections granted to those fleeing instability?
The Justice Department, defending the Trump administration’s sweeping move to rescind humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, urged the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a ruling that had frozen those cancellations.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, appointed during Trump’s presidency, tore up Biden-era parole policies, arguing they overreached and strained the immigration system. Her critics say she didn’t have the authority to issue a mass revocation without evaluating each migrant’s case individually.
That’s precisely where U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani drew the line earlier this year. She ruled that parole can’t be stripped en masse—each decision must weigh individual circumstances. The Biden administration’s program, launched first for Venezuelans and later expanded, was designed to channel migrants through legal pathways if they met stringent vetting and had U.S.-based sponsors.
The Trump administration’s legal team, citing a recent Supreme Court stay on Talwani’s order, claimed this was already a near-win. “The justices didn’t explain why,” admitted U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta, but he noted the implication: “The plaintiffs may not have the stronger hand.”
Indeed, the high court’s majority stayed silent on the reasoning, leaving only a sharp dissent from liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor. The rest offered nothing more than a signature—and a signal that lower courts might be expected to follow their lead, sight unseen.
But Justin Cox, representing the migrants, argued that silence isn’t a mandate. “The Court didn’t explain itself,” he told the panel. “We’d only be guessing if we tried to interpret it.”
Even if the lower court ultimately rules against Noem’s broad cancellations, the battle may only pause, not end. Judge Gustavo Gelpí acknowledged the Department of Homeland Security could reattempt termination through a new procedure. Still, Cox believes the ruling could at least offer dignity—a chance for migrants to exit under their own power, not under escort.
For now, this courtroom clash—**Doe v. Noem**—remains a barometer of how much discretion one administration can undo from another. And for hundreds of thousands, the question is no longer theoretical.
