In a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown, a federal judge in Boston said she plans to block efforts to strip legal protections from nearly half a million migrants who entered the U.S. through humanitarian parole programs.
At the center of the legal clash are Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans—individuals granted temporary two-year parole status under programs launched during the Biden administration. President Trump’s team had aimed to revoke that status, effective April 24, leaving hundreds of thousands vulnerable to sudden deportation. But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani made it clear on Thursday: the law doesn’t support it.
“This isn’t about people sneaking over borders,” Talwani said. “You’re targeting those who followed the rules.”
The Department of Homeland Security had tried to justify its move by arguing that the statute allowed for the expedited removal of parolees. But the judge wasn’t buying it. She said the law they cited applies to unauthorized border crossers—not to individuals who entered legally under a structured, government-authorized program.
The ruling, though not yet formalized, would halt what immigrant advocates have called an unprecedented mass cancellation of legal status. Outside the courthouse, Laura Flores-Perilla from the Justice Action Center called the situation urgent and deeply human.
“These are families who have built lives here. This is not some policy debate in the abstract—this is about real people who fled danger, sought refuge, and followed the rules laid out for them,” she said.
The Trump administration’s attempt to terminate these Biden-era parole programs—initially created to manage high migration volumes from countries in crisis—has sparked lawsuits from advocacy groups. The case took a sharper turn when the administration not only paused the programs but also tried to retroactively strip legal status from those already admitted.
While Justice Department lawyers insisted the parole was discretionary and could be revoked at will, Talwani made it clear she saw the administration’s interpretation as flawed—and rushed. She stopped short of requiring the government to keep accepting new applicants but promised swift action to freeze the move against those already here.
For now, the fate of nearly 450,000 migrants hangs in the balance—but thanks to this court intervention, they may have a fighting chance to remain on the path they were legally promised.
