Homeland Security to End Legal Status for 532,000 Migrants From Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela

The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that it will strip legal protections from roughly 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, leaving them open to possible deportation in about a month.

The order covers people from the four countries who entered the United States after October 2022 with financial sponsors and received two-year permits allowing them to live and work in the country. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said their status will end on April 24, which is 30 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register.

The change affects people already living in the U.S. under the humanitarian parole program. It comes after an earlier decision by the Trump administration to end what it described as "broad abuse" of parole, a long-standing legal mechanism that presidents have used to let people from countries facing war or political instability enter and stay temporarily.

DHS said parolees who have no other lawful basis to remain in the country "must depart" before their parole termination date. "Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status," the agency said.

Until now, beneficiaries could remain in the U.S. until their parole expired, although the administration had already halted the processing of their applications for asylum, visas and other requests that could have allowed them to stay longer.

President Donald Trump promised during his campaign to deport millions of people living in the country illegally, and since taking office he has also been closing legal pathways for immigrants to enter and remain in the United States.

The administration's move is already being contested in federal court. A group of American citizens and immigrants filed a lawsuit seeking to restore the programs for the four nationalities. Karen Tumlin, founder and director of the Justice Action Center, one of the organizations that brought the suit at the end of February, said Friday's action will "cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country." She called it "reckless, cruel and counterproductive."

The program, known as CHNV, was created under the Biden administration, which allowed up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries to come to the U.S. for two years with eligibility to work. In exchange, the administration persuaded Mexico to take back the same number of people from those countries, since the U.S. could deport few, if any, of them to their homelands.

Cuba generally accepted about one deportation flight a month, while Venezuela and Nicaragua refused to take any; all three are adversaries of the United States. Haiti accepted many flights, particularly after a surge of Haitian migrants in the small Texas border town of Del Rio in 2021, but constant turmoil in the country has complicated U.S. efforts.

Since late 2022, more than half a million people have arrived under the policy. It was part of the Biden administration's strategy of encouraging migrants to use new legal channels while cracking down on those who crossed the border illegally.