Trump revokes legal status for more than 500,000 migrants from four troubled countries

DAILY MAIL

Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States.

The announcement was made by Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem on a notice to a Federal Register on Friday, the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.

The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022 under a program called CHNV that the Biden administration was heavily criticized for.

Uncertainty still remains for some 240,000 Ukrainians who sought refuge in the US following the Russian invasion in 2021. 

Trump was said to be considering ending their legal status even before recent tensions between Washington and Kyiv. 

The migrants losing legal status arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the U.S.

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 impacts people who are already in the U.S. and who came under the humanitarian parole program.

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 U.S.

During his campaign President Donald Trump promised to deport millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally, and as president he has been also ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the U.S. and to stay.

DHS said parolees without a lawful basis to stay in the U.S. ‘must depart’ before their parole termination date.

‘Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status,’ DHS said.

Before the new order, the beneficiaries of the program could stay in the U.S. until their parole expires, although the administration had stopped processing their applications for asylum, visas and other requests that might allow them to remain longer.

The administration decision has already been challenged in federal courts .