In a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, a federal appeals court on Monday refused to greenlight a sweeping plan to cut short the temporary legal status of nearly 400,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—many of whom have been living and working in the U.S. under a humanitarian program inherited from the Biden era.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston rejected a request to stay an earlier ruling that froze the Department of Homeland Security’s move to abruptly end two-year parole grants awarded under the previous administration. That parole had allowed hundreds of thousands to reside and work legally inside the U.S.—a lifeline now dangling under the weight of partisan policy shifts.
The administration, in its filing, claimed that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had the authority to erase the migrants’ parole en masse. Lawyers argued that the court’s injunction was shackling the federal government, forcing it to harbor “hundreds of thousands of aliens” it wanted to deport.
The panel of judges—all appointed by Democratic presidents—was unconvinced. In their decision, they concluded Noem had not demonstrated that her abrupt, across-the-board cancellation of the migrants’ legal status would survive legal scrutiny. Without that showing, the court let the lower judge’s ruling stand.
Immigrant advocacy groups celebrated the decision. Karen Tumlin of the Justice Action Center called the administration’s maneuver “reckless and illegal,” emphasizing that blanket policy shifts can’t override the law’s requirement for individual case review.
The backdrop to the case is a lawsuit challenging DHS’s attempt to dismantle Biden-era parole programs for migrants from conflict-stricken nations including Ukraine, Afghanistan, and the four Latin American countries at the heart of this ruling.
In a notice published in March, DHS signaled its intent to terminate the two-year parole program that had allowed these migrants to build lives in the U.S. But on April 25, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani put the brakes on that effort. She ruled that ending parole without reviewing each case individually violated legal standards and was based on a flawed interpretation of immigration authority.
With the appeals court siding against the administration, the battle may now shift to the Supreme Court.
Despite the legal blow, DHS remains defiant. A department spokesperson said, “No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us” from pursuing its immigration overhaul.
But for now, thousands of migrants remain protected—at least temporarily—by the courts. Whether those protections endure will depend on whether the highest court in the country decides to weigh in.
