An immigration attorney cheered Monday evening as a judge issued an emergency order to temporarily block the government's effort to suddenly cancel parole and work permits for many migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, who were legally allowed into the United States.
The government told the immigrants they could stay for up to two years, but a new rule under the Trump administration said their legal stay would end early — on April 24 — unless the government decided otherwise. The migrants affected by the rule raced to the courts to stop this from happening.
The judge's order temporarily blocked the Trump administration from canceling everyone’s parole all at once under the special CHNV program until the court makes a final decision.
ALSO READ: 'Alarming': Small colleges bullied into silence as Trump poses 'existential threat'
The judge in the case, Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, struck a pointed and fiery tone in parts of her order.
"Because the categorical termination of the period of parole previously awarded to the parolees violates the parole statute, the same statute cannot be read to give the Secretary the discretion to take such unlawful action," the judge wrote.
In another section, the judge knocked the government for repeatedly using the term “inadmissible aliens” to describe people in the
United States in the parole programs, saying they gave "no reason for mislabeling individuals who received parole through CHNV (or any other program) as 'inadmissible.'"
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on x: "BIG news: potentially hundreds of thousands of people were at risk of having their humanitarian parole terminated early, starting on April 24. This saves those people from immediate terminations. However, just as under Biden, the parole will expire at two years."