Trump Terminates Parole Option for Venezuelan, Cuban Immigrants

The Department of Homeland Security released a notice Friday ending a Biden-era parole program for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Immigrants admitted to the US through the program will see their parole expire 30 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register on March 25 unless the secretary makes a determination to the contrary, DHS said.

Known as “CHNV,” the process was launched in 2022 to reduce new arrivals at the US-Mexico border by allowing a limited number of immigrants to travel to the US before applying for a status like asylum.

The program required that immigrants have US-based sponsors to be admitted and allowed them to work legally after coming to the US. About 532,000 people had been admitted through the program as of December 2024.

DHS said in the Federal Register notice that the parole processes “have at best traded an unmanageable population of unlawful migration along the southwest border for the additional complication of a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status.”

President Donald Trump explicitly targeted the CHNV process in a Jan. 20 executive order that directed the DHS to terminate “all categorical parole programs.” The agency had already suspended new entries and sponsorship applications for CHNV and another parole program for Ukrainians in response to the executive order.

Last month, US Citizenship and Immigration Services also froze adjudication of new immigration benefits—including asylum, temporary protected status, or green cards—for parolees already in the US. The agency said that was necessary while it vetted the program for fraud and national security issues. But it also blocks immigrants’ efforts to secure another status that would protect them from deportation.

Several immigrants sued the Trump administration in a Massachusetts federal court last month over the dismantling of parole pathways and the benefits freeze. The lawsuit alleged violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and due process.

DHS has separately announced plans to terminate Temporary Protected Status relief for Venezuelans and Haitians in the US. Plaintiffs have filed multiple challenges to maintain those protections.