Good news for beneficiaries of Biden era humanitarian parole program.
A federal court has blocked a Trump administration policy that aimed to quickly deport migrants who were legally admitted into the United States on humanitarian grounds, CBS News reported Friday.
The ruling could hamper a controversial immigration enforcement tactic used by federal authorities, particularly after court hearings.
The decision by a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., comes as a major development for more than 320,000 Haitians who entered the country over the past two years through the humanitarian parole program, commonly referred to as the Biden program.
Judge Jia Cobb ruled that immigration authorities cannot rely on two Trump administration directives to apply expedited removal to migrants who were legally admitted into the country through parole — a provision in U.S. immigration law that allows foreigners to enter temporarily for urgent humanitarian reasons and grants them the right to live and work legally in the U.S.
The measures specifically targeted migrants who had entered under Biden-era programs. If upheld, Cobb’s ruling could significantly weaken the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out mass deportations. The Department of Justice is expected to appeal the decision.
One of the key strategies in question involved closing ongoing court cases so that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents could detain migrants as they exited their immigration hearings and place them in expedited removal, CBS News reported.
Unlike standard immigration proceedings — which can take years due to a massive case backlog — expedited removal enables authorities to quickly deport individuals who arrived within the past two years, unless they express a credible fear of persecution.
Videos from multiple cities have shown migrants being detained immediately after their hearings, sometimes in the presence of family members. In several cases, those arrested were visibly distraught or crying, as reported by CBS News. Democratic lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates have strongly criticized the practice, calling it unfair to those who are following the legal process.
In her ruling, Judge Cobb found that the Trump administration’s directives were unlawful. She cited the cases of two migrants — one from Cuba and one from Venezuela — who had lawfully entered the country and complied with all legal procedures: “The plaintiffs played by the rules,” she wrote. Yet they were still targeted for expedited removal.
The judge emphasized a deeper issue at stake:
“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules,” Cobb wrote. “Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that — as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers — may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a prominent immigration law professor and expert, told CBS News the order could spare “several hundred thousand people” from immediate deportation, at least temporarily. He cited more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who entered through Biden-era parole programs. The decision also protects some of the nearly 1 million migrants who entered via the southern border under the now-discontinued CBP One mobile app.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees immigration enforcement, condemned the ruling. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said:
“This ruling is lawless and won’t stand.”
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Source: CBS News
