By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-22 01:21:32 | Updated at 2025-03-22 06:57:16
5 hours ago
The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that it will revoke legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in about a month.
The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022.
The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the migrants under former President Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.
The US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.
The new policy affects people who are already in the US and who came under the humanitarian parole programme. It follows an earlier Trump administration decision to end what it called the “broad abuse” of the humanitarian parole, a long-standing legal tool presidents have used to allow people from countries where there’s war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the US.
During his campaign, President Donald Trump, a Republican, promised to deport millions of people who are in the US illegally, and as president he has been also ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the US and to stay.
