Trump Termination of Migrant Protections Gets First Appeals Test

The Trump administration’s abrupt termination of temporary deportation protections for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants will get its first appellate test as the government fights an ongoing legal battle over its broad agenda to curtail humanitarian immigrant relief.

The Boston-based US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit will hear oral arguments Tuesday over the Department of Homeland Security’s revocation of parole grants for roughly half a million immigrants from those countries. They were admitted to the US through a Biden-era “CHNV” program aimed at addressing an influx of arrivals at the southern border.

Presidents have used parole authority for decades to temporarily admit individuals without another lawful status when it serves a humanitarian need or the public interest. Although a Massachusetts federal judge blocked DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s blanket termination of CHNV parole grants as likely unlawful, the US Supreme Court later allowed the cancellations to move forward in a one-paragraph order without addressing the merits of the case.

The government claims the justices’ decision suggests the lower court should be overturned. It argued elsewhere that its high court wins on emergency requests should sway subsequent lower court rulings.

But those “shadow docket” decisions offer no analysis that can be relied on by lower courts, said Esther Sung, legal director at the Justice Action Center and counsel for plaintiffs challenging the termination.

“These types of decisions from the Supreme Court have no precedential value whatsoever,” she said. “They just don’t.”

Judicial Review

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that ending CHNV parole is “a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First.”

The government has argued that actions terminating that relief are inherently shielded from judicial review—a claim it has advanced in multiple cases involving temporary humanitarian programs. The district court adopted an “untenably narrow reading of the jurisdictional bar” on discretionary immigration decisions, it said in a court filing.

Plaintiffs say, however, that they’re not challenging terminations of individual cases but the process used to cancel protections en masse. The government’s claims that the Biden administration used “categorical reasons” to decide parole was warranted don’t hold water, and were never part of its original justification for terminating protections, plaintiffs’ attorneys said.

The case will be heard by Circuit Court Judges Gustavo Gelpí Jr., a Biden appointee, William Kayatta Jr., an Obama appointee, and Lara E. Montecalvo, a Biden appointee.

The libertarian Cato Institute joined local governments and a group of faith-based groups in filing amicus briefs that urged the panel to uphold the lower court ruling.

The Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, backed DHS arguments that use of parole authority is exempt from judicial review.

The president can suspend entry of any immigrants according to his view of national interest, said Chris Hajec, executive director and general counsel at IRLI.

“This power takes us beyond the parole statute in deciding this case, and we argue that it allows Trump, acting through Secretary Noem, to send Biden’s mass parolees home,” he said in a statement.

Slow Benefit Approvals

The First Circuit panel will hear arguments as plaintiffs’ attorneys separately seek details on the processing of green cards, work permits, and other immigration benefits sought by CHNV parolees and others before an administrative pause earlier this year.

Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts ordered DHS to lift the benefits freeze in May, and the agency shared data in court documents last month showing that just under 9,000 applications had been processed.

Many immigrants, including Ukrainians with parole grants expiring soon, have continued to encounter delays or been told adjudication of their cases is still on hold.

Sung said the government appears to be imposing vetting procedures that have had the same effect as a blanket pause. No recent court filings show that it’s “truly resumed processing of benefits the way it existed before the administration threw all this sand into the gears,” she said.

Talwani is scheduled to hold a hearing this week on the dispute. DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment on the case or the status of pending benefits sought by parolees.

In addition to Justice Action Center, plaintiffs are represented by Human Rights First, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, and the Law Office Of Justin B. Cox. DHS is represented by the Department of Justice.

The case is Doe v. Noem, 1st Cir., No. 25-01384, oral arguments scheduled 7/29/25.