- On Tuesday, the Trump Administration officially announced the termination of the categorical parole program for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV parole programs). While this move has been expected, it is still deeply disturbing and inhumane to force more than 500,000 vulnerable people to return to countries that suffer from intense political and economic instability. Individuals who currently have parole through this program will lose their status, and their work authorization, on April 24, 2025, but the administration has left open the possibility that parolees could be detained and deported even before the deadline. Regardless of any enforcement actions, the administration expects everyone paroled under CHNV to leave the country by the termination date unless they have a pending application for another form of relief. However, this could leave thousands of people in limbo as the administration had already stopped processing such applications for relief last month.
- Also on Tuesday, we learned through media reports that the administration has suspended processing of green card applications for those who have already been granted refugee or asylee status. The administration had already stopped admissions of refugees and blocked asylum applications at the border. This latest move was done quietly with no public notice.
- In defiance of decades of privacy protections, the IRS and ICE are negotiating an agreement to share information about immigrant tax-payers. The proposed agreement appears to be limited in scope and would only allow ICE to ask the IRS to verify whether or not the name and address information that DHS matches an individual’s tax records. In addition, this would only be used in cases where an individual has committed a crime, such as having stayed in the country despite a removal order.
- The administration continues to show its contempt for civil rights by cutting staffing at DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman. It is unclear from media reports how much of the staff is going to be cut, or whether these offices will continue to exist at all.
- For the third time since the inauguration, the administration has cut funding to legal organizations providing services to unaccompanied minors. Although impacted organizations are too devoted to their work to allow existing clients to go without representation as their cases move forward, it is likely that unaccompanied minors will face great difficulty finding attorneys from now on.
- On Tuesday April 1 at 10am, advocates from across the state will gather at the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston to support a lawsuit against the administration’s decision to end TPS for Haiti and Venezuela. This is the first hearing in a suit filed earlier this month by Haitian Americans United, the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, and the UndocuBlack Network as well as impacted individuals.
- On Wednesday, a federal appellate court upheld a district court’s injunction on using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans without due process. The case was brought by the ACLU in Washington, D.C. on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas. The administration had previously sparked a constitutional conflict when they had ignored the District Court’s order to halt such deportations, sending hundreds to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The administration had previously been claiming that the deportees were all violent gang members, but it has since emerged that many were labelled gang members simply because they had tattoos.