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A federal appeals court handed the Trump administration a major win on Friday by upholding the revocation of temporary protected status (TPS) for more than 400,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The ruling by a three-judge panel in Boston vacates a district-court order that maintained protected status for these immigrants.
“We recognize the risks of irreparable harm persuasively laid out in the district court’s order: that parolees who lawfully arrived in this country were suddenly forced to choose between leaving in less than a month—a choice that potentially includes being separated from their families, communities, and lawful employment and returning to dangers in their home countries,” the judges wrote.
“But absent a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits, the risk of such irreparable harms cannot, by itself, support a stay,” they added.
The Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela (CHNV) Program was launched in January 2023 and allowed up to 30,000 migrants a month from the four participating countries to enter the US for a period of two years, with work authorization.
In order to qualify for the program, applicants needed a US sponsor and had to pass background checks.
One of President Trump’s first Executive Orders targeted the program.
A legal battle ensued, with the Supreme Court granting an emergency appeal by the Justice Department, which sent the case back to the First Circuit and lifted the district court’s injunction.
In July, the Trump administration sent termination notices to immigrants in the US under the CHNV program, telling them their work authorizations and protections were now revoked.
“[The Biden Administration] allowed more than half a million poorly vetted aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their immediate family members to enter the United States through these disastrous parole programs; granted them opportunities to compete for American jobs and undercut American workers; forced career civil servants to promote the programs even when fraud was identified; and then blamed Republicans in Congress for the chaos that ensued and the crime that followed,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, in July.
“Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First.”
