On April 14, Judge Indira Talwani, of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, issued a written order temporarily blocking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from terminating categorical parole programs that have authorized individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV programs) to live and work in the U.S. temporarily. The Judge stated her intention to do so on April 10 and has now documented her decision in a written order.

These specific programs were established in 2022 and 2023 during the Biden administration. Over the past two years, DHS has implemented processes through which individuals from these countries could request authorization to travel to the U.S. in order to be considered for parole. If granted, parole authorizes a temporary stay in the country and the ability to apply for work authorization, so long as applicants had a U.S. financial sponsor and passed security screenings.

Individuals who are paroled into the United States, including those paroled through the CHNV parole programs, may generally apply for and be granted employment authorization under the (c)(11) employment eligibility category.

DHS announced its termination of these programs in a March 25 notice in the Federal Register (March 25 Federal Register Notice). The effect of this action is that the temporary parole period of individuals in the U.S. under the CHNV parole programs and whose parole has not already expired by April 24, 2025, will terminate on that date unless DHS makes an individual determination to the contrary.

However, the Memorandum & Order Granting In Part Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion For A Stay Of DHS’s En Masse Truncation Of All Valid Grants Of CHNV Parole temporarily blocks (or “stays,” in the court’s language) the March 25 termination of parole processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans pending further court order “insofar as it revokes, without case-by-case review, the previously granted parole and work authorization issued to noncitizens paroled into the United States pursuant to parole programs for noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela … prior to the noncitizen’s originally stated parole end date,” and also stays, pending further court order, all individual notices of parole revocation sent to noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela via their USCIS online account.

Also on April 14, Judge Talwani issued a separate Order granting the establishment of a “class” of individuals whose interests will be represented within the suit, consisting of all individuals who have received a grant of parole that is subject to the March 25 Federal Register Notice rescinding individual grants of parole on a categorical and en masse basis, except: (1) those individuals who voluntarily left, and remain outside, the United States prior to the issuance of that Notice; and (2) those individuals who choose to opt out of the class in order to seek relief in separate litigation.

DHS is expected to promptly appeal these orders to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.