WASHINGTON: A US federal appeals court has rejected an effort by former President Donald Trump’s administration to revoke the temporary legal status of approximately 400,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
On Monday, the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals declined a request to lift a lower court ruling that halted the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to end a two-year parole granted to these migrants. That parole had originally been authorised during President Joe Biden’s tenure.
The ruling preserves protections for thousands of individuals who were granted temporary legal residence on humanitarian grounds. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The administration’s action marked an expansion of the Republican president’s hardline crackdown on immigration and push to ramp up deportations, including of noncitizens previously granted a legal right to live and work in the United States.
The ruling came in a lawsuit by immigrant rights advocates challenging an agency decision to pause various Biden-era parole programs that have allowed Ukrainian, Afghan, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants to enter the country.
While the case was pending, the Homeland Security Department on March 25 announced in a Federal Register notice that it had decided to terminate the two-year parole granted to about 400,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelan migrants.
US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, on April 25 halted the agency’s action, which she said revoked previously granted parole and work authorisations for migrants on a categorical basis and without a necessary case-by-case review.
