MIAMI — More than a million migrants who were allowed to enter the United States during the Biden administration may have their temporary stays revoked and be rapidly deported, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement document that became public Friday.
That includes hundreds of thousands of nationals from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti who came under a temporary humanitarian parole program set up by the Biden administration that allowed them to legally live and work in the U.S. for two years.
The ICE document, signed by Homeland Security Acting Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman, comes days after President Donald Trump issued an executive order that ended the Biden-era parole program and suspended the use of a phone application known as CBP One.
The app allowed migrants outside the United States to schedule appointments with immigration authorities to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, after which many entered the country with parole. Just under one million people were paroled in at the border after using the CBP One app to request appointments.
The app was also used by applicants in the Biden-era program parole program to obtain travel authorization to fly to the United States. Under that program, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Haitians could come to the U.S. as long as they had a financial sponsor, met certain background and health requirements and entered through an airport. More than 531,000 people from the four countries had flown to the U.S. under the program as of November, according to federal data.
On Friday, South Florida immigration advocates and lawyers expressed shock about the decision.
“It is cruel and inhumane,” Miami Dade County Commissioner and Haitian rights advocate Marleine Bastien said. “I urge the Trump administration to work with Haitian-American elected leaders, stakeholders to find sustainable Haitian-centered solutions for Haitian to stay. Now is not the time to send them to a nation in turmoil.”
Bastien said that the parole program, in particular, allowed Haitians a reprieve from the deteriorating humanitarian and political crisis in their home country, which is being overrun by escalating gang violence.
“These are families with children in school, professionals working in all aspects of our society, paying taxes and contributing,” she said. “Sending them to Haiti will put their lives and their children’s lives in grave danger.”
The ICE memo is part of the tsunami of policies that the Trump administration has rolled out to radically reshape the U.S. immigration system during the president’s first week in office. Trump has issued executive orders to limit birthright citizenship, declaring a national emergency at the southwest border, and instructing border agents to summarily deport asylum-seeking migrants without granting them a hearing.
“The people targeted by this directive have done everything the government asked of them. Today they are living and working in the U.S., hundreds of thousands with U.S.-based sponsors, including family and friends,” Tom Jawetz, who worked as a senior Homeland Security lawyer in the Biden administration, said about Friday’s memo. “Terminating their parole status and subjecting them to deportation without due process is deeply unfair and will be challenged in court.”
The Biden administration had announced in October that existing beneficiaries of the parole program would not be able to renew their parole after two years, meaning that they would need to find another way to stay in the country or leave. In the case of Haitians and Venezuelans, as well as Ukrainian nationals who have benefited from a similar parole, President Biden renewed, and in some cases extended, another provision known as Temporary Protected Status. The federal program shields people from countries in turmoil from deportation. The benefit was meant to provide an extra layer of protection, though in his first administration, Trump tried to end the program for some groups, including Haitians.
Mark Prada, a Miami-based immigration lawyer, emphasized that the scope of the executive order is much broader than just Biden program recipients.
“This is a tool for mass deportation,” said Prada, adding that the memo could lead to ICE agents showing up at immigration courts to scoop up people and detain them.
The ICE memo says that officers can prioritize for rapid deportation migrants who arrived under the program and who did not apply for asylum within their first year in the country. While the memo does not tell officers how to exercise their discretion on deportation priorities, it requires them to review cases of people who are in the country on a parole, on a temporary permit to be in the country on humanitarian or public-interest grounds, in current immigration-court proceedings, as well as recent arrivals.
It’s up to immigration officers’ discretion whether to place those people in “expedited removal,” a process that allows them to quickly deport people. That can include terminating a current immigration case in court or rescinding a parole.
It is not entirely clear how the new directives would affect Cuban migrants in particular, but longtime Miami immigration lawyer Wilfredo Allen said Cubans might be more protected from the effects of the new Trump policies unless they have already been ordered to be deported.
Cubans can obtain permanent residency after a year and a day of being admitted to the U.S. under the decades-old law known as the Cuban Adjustment Act, and the Cuban government is reluctant to take back Cubans deported from the U.S., so Allen he thinks it is unlikely that immigration authorities will actively target Cuban migrants.
The expansion of expedited removal applies to migrants who have been here for up to two years and were not admitted on a visa. But the memo advises DHS agents to prioritize reviewing cases of migrants “eligible for expedited removal who failed to apply for asylum” within a one-year deadline after entering the country.
Because of that language, some Cuban migrants, like those who entered through the CBP One app but failed to file for asylum within a year, might be at risk of being deported, Allen said.
Allen said Nicaraguans, who come from a country whose Temporary Protected Status has not been expanded since 1999, are at greater risk. He said Haitians, for whom the previous Trump administration tried to terminate temporary protections and who were political targets during Trump’s presidential campaign, could also be targeted under the Friday memo.
“Cubans currently with applications for the Cuban Adjustment Act should be protected until their cases are fully resolved. Venezuelans and Nicaraguans who have no criminal record and have applied for asylum through the proper and legal channels should also be protected until their cases are fully resolved. They were enrolled under programs offered to them and they should have the ability to see their applications out to rectify their legal status,” said U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Miami told the Miami Herald.
Cubans who entered through the Biden-era parole program but who have yet to meet the one-year stay requirement to apply for a green card under the Cuban Adjustment Act “should have the opportunity” to do so, Salazar said.
In a letter Friday, Salazar urged Acting Secretary Huffman to ensure that all Cubans paroled in under the Biden-era program “eligible for or with pending applications for the Cuban Adjustment Act are protected from deportation until their cases are fully resolved.”
Salazar also asked Huffman to protect Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians who arrived through the parole program, have no criminal record and applied for asylum.
While Biden was in office, Republicans had sharply criticized the parole program for Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Haitians as an abuse of executive parole authority, which presidents have used for decades to allow migrants from other countries in turmoil to enter the U.S. GOP attempts to shut down the program through the courts, however, failed.
On Friday, the White House announced it had started deporting migrants using military flights. Immigration advocates noted that Biden had already ramped up deportations prior to leaving office.
The use of military flights is the result of an executive order Trump signed earlier this week. The White House also noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of Thursday night had made 538 arrests and issued 373 detainers. Detainers are requests from ICE to other law enforcement agencies asking to be notified when immigrants in their custody are released so the federal agency can proceed to detain them.
By SYRA ORTIZ BLANES/Miami Herald
Syra Ortiz Blanes covers immigration for the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. Previously, she was the Puerto Rico and Spanish Caribbean reporter for the Heralds through Report for America.
