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.
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
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 .
A group of American citizens and immigrants sued the Trump administration for ending humanitarian parole and are seeking to reinstate the programs for the four nationalities.
Lawyers and activists raised their voices to denounce the government´s decision.
The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022
Friday’s action is ‘going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country,’ said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit at the end of February. She called it ‘reckless, cruel and counterproductive.’
The Biden administration allowed up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries to come to the United States for two years with eligibility to work.
It persuaded Mexico to take back the same number from those countries because the U.S. could deport few, if any, to their homes.
Haitians and Cubans that are involved with the program are immediately eligible for taxpayer-funded federal benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and welfare.
Analysis by DailyMail.com indicates that the Medicaid cost, which costs around $9,175 per enrollee, would cost $1.8 billion if every Haitian who entered the country received it.
SNAP benefits, more commonly known as food stamps, would cost the country $451 million, with general welfare benefits climbing to $1.2 billion.
The three figures take the overall spend on benefits only to over an eyewatering $3.4 billion.
Even if only a quarter of the Haitians are getting all the benefits they are entitled to receive, that figure would stand at $850 million.
Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register
It follows an earlier Trump administration decision to end what it called the ‘broad abuse’ of the humanitarian parole
Average costs were obtained from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Department of Health & Human Services, and a Medicaid Commission.
Court documents show that the vetting process isn’t stringent, with an approval rating of 98.3 percent for Haitian applicants from January to June of last year.
In that time frame, 78,838 Haitians had applied to the program with the Department of Homeland Security adjudicating 64,285 cases. Of those, 63,214 applications were approved.
That figure was revealed in a lawsuit filed this year by the state of Texas and other Republican-led states who sued the Biden administration to block the program.
Other states including Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas argued that the program had left them with extra costs for health care, education and law enforcement.
They also argued that the Biden administration was inviting people who otherwise would have entered the country illegally.
Cuba generally accepted about one deportation flight a month, while Venezuela and Nicaragua refused to take any. All three are U.S. adversaries.
Haiti accepted many deportation flights, especially after a surge of migrants from the Caribbean country in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas, in 2021. But Haiti has been in constant turmoil, hampering U.S. efforts.
Since late 2022, more than half a million people have come to the U.S. under the policy, also known as CHNV.
It was a part of the Biden administration´s approach to encourage people to come through new legal channels while cracking down on those who crossed the border illegally.
