US revokes legal status for 500,000 immigrants
By AFP
March 22, 2025
President Joe Biden had touted the protected status scheme as a way to ease pressure on the US-Mexico border - Copyright POOL/AFP Ng Han Guan
The United States said Friday it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country.
President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations.
The order affects around 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the United States under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden and expanded in January the following year.
They will lose their legal protection 30 days after the Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal Register, which is scheduled Tuesday.
That means immigrants sponsored by the program “must depart the United States” by April 24 unless they have secured another immigration status allowing them to remain in the country, the order says.
Welcome.US, which supports people seeking refuge in the United States, urged those affected by the move to “immediately” seek advice from an immigration lawyer.
The Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) program, announced in January 2023, allowed entry to the United States for two years for up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries, which have grim human rights records.
Biden touted the plan as a “safe and humane” way to ease pressure on the crowded US-Mexico border.
But the Department of Homeland Security stressed Friday that the scheme was “temporary.”
“Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status, nor does it constitute an admission to the United States,” it said in the order.
– ‘Chaos’ –
Nicolette Glazer, an immigration lawyer in California, said the order would affect the “vast majority” of the half a million immigrants who entered the United States under the CHNV scheme.
“Only 75,000 affirmative asylum applications were filed, so the vast majority of the CHNV parolees will find themselves without status, work permits, and subject to removal,” she posted on X.
“The chaos will be unreal”.
Karen Tumlin, director of immigrant rights group Justice Action Center, said the Trump administration was “breaking a commitment the federal government made to the hundreds of thousands” of immigrants and their sponsors in the United States.
“Suddenly revoking the lawful status of hundreds of thousands of CHNV humanitarian parole recipients is going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country,” she said in a statement.
Trump last weekend invoked rare wartime legislation to fly more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador, which has offered to imprison migrants and even US citizens at a discount.
More than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country over the last decade as the oil-rich country’s economy implodes under leftist leader Nicolas Maduro, a bugbear of Washington who has faced major sanctions.
Op-Ed |
We Need a New Wave of Airport Protests to Reject Trump’s Deportation Agenda
Airport protests stymied the 2017 Muslim ban. As Trump’s administration targets even more people, we need a repeat.
March 21, 2025
Demonstrators hold signs as they protest the deportation of Assistant Professor of Medicine Dr. Rasha Alawieh of Brown University at the State House in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 17, 2025.Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images
Over the past two weeks, the Trump administration’s detention, interrogation and deportation machine has shown a new level of cruelty. The detention and deportation of visa holders, followed by over 200 Venezuelan nationals without due process, has caused judicial controversy and a struggle in the courts. But activists and progressives cannot simply rely on the court system to rein in Donald Trump. Popular pressure is needed to push back on the impunity of the Trump administration and the cruelty of border control agents, especially in the face of a likely new Muslim ban. In 2017, a wave of mass protest at airports stood up against Trump’s first attempt at the racist ban. They offer a model for the kind of protest needed now to stop brutal detentions and deportations.
Border agents emboldened by Trump have shown particular cruelty at Boston Logan International Airport over the past few weeks. On March 13, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stopped Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school with a valid H-1B visa, who was returning to the U.S. from a visit to Lebanon. Possibly targeting her for being from South Lebanon — which has been under Israeli bombardment and incursion since October 2023, and is often labeled a “Hezbollah stronghold” given its Shia majority population — border officials detained Alawieh for 36 hours and interrogated her before deporting her. This was despite a judge’s injunction to halt her deportation and Alawieh’s lawyers demanding that the plane not take off. Her lawyers have accused CBP agents of willfully disobeying the court order by sending her back to Lebanon.
Alawieh had been studying and working in the U.S. for the last six years, completing programs at Ohio State University, the University of Washington and Yale’s Internal Medicine program before working and teaching at Brown. After deporting her, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that the deportation was justified, alleging that, under interrogation, she admitted sympathy for Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, and that she had attended his funeral — which was attended by an estimated 700,000 to 900,000 Lebanese people, over 10 percent of Lebanon’s population.
The week prior, on March 7, CBP officials at Logan airport detained German national and green card holder Fabian Schmidt and interrogated him until he collapsed. Schmidt told his family that he was violently interrogated, stripped naked and put in a cold shower. CBP claimed that he had “drug-related charges” — including a charge of possessing marijuana in 2015 that had later been dismissed. Over two weeks later, Schmidt is still in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Additional cases of individuals detained, interrogated and deported upon arriving to the U.S. continue to come to light — including those denied entry for having criticized Trump’s policies.
On March 15, two days after Alawieh’s detention at Boston Logan, Trump forced through the deportation of over 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, claiming — without providing evidence — that they were members of a Venezuelan gang. Despite the efforts of the ACLU and other legal advocacy groups, their insistence that several Venezuelans slated to be deported were falsely accused of gang membership, and a temporary order from D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the Trump administration pushed through with their deportation, invoking the Alien Enemies Act to override their due process.
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In defiance of the court order, two planes failed to turn around after having departed from Texas carrying the deportees to a mega-prison in El Salvador that has been called a “Guantánamo on steroids” for its horrific conditions, lack of legal recourse for detainees and the likelihood that detainees will “never be allowed out.” And a third deportation flight is believed to have departed Texas after the restraining order was issued.
These examples are only a few of the many unjust detentions and attempted deportations overseen by the Trump administration in recent weeks, and the attacks are likely to continue to mount. The case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and leader of Columbia’s encampment movement detained by ICE, exemplifies the Trump administration’s punitive attempts to target and deport Palestine solidarity activists in particular. Khalil, a Palestinian refugee from Syria, is one of many green card holders associated with the Palestine solidarity movement that the Trump regime is attempting to deport. But the attacks and deportations are likely to become even broader still. The New York Times has reported that Trump aims to put in place an expanded Muslim ban, with as many as 43 countries reportedly under consideration for full or partial travel bans. This is likely to be implemented in the coming weeks if not days.
Following the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, and the back-and-forth race against Judge Boasberg’s restraining orders against the deportations, Trump attacked Boasberg and called for his impeachment. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement against the impeachment of judges for their disagreements.
In spite of the efforts of judges like Boasberg and Roberts, numerous right-wing judges fill our U.S. courtrooms, including in the Supreme Court, which upheld Trump’s Muslim ban in 2018. And even when lawyers and judges push back on harmful policies, it is most often due to the efforts of large-scale movement organizing. The airport protests of 2017 were one such case, providing the pressure that brought about a stay of airport detentions.
Activists and progressives cannot simply rely on the court system to rein in Donald Trump.
The day after Trump announced the first iteration of his Muslim ban on January 27, 2017 — banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and leaving at least 100 people in limbo or in detention at U.S. airports, including permanent residents and green card holders — thousands of protesters mobilized to airports across the U.S. Thousands amassed at New York City’s JFK airport and at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, over a thousand at San Francisco International Airport, around 1,000 at Boston’s Logan airport, and hundreds at other airports around the country to demand the entry of stranded and detained individuals, to insist that they be welcomed rather than turned away and to reject Trump’s racist policy. In San Francisco, protesters occupied the airport for over 36 hours and shut down the international terminal, disrupting business as usual, preventing any flights from departing the international gates, and ensuring that flights that arrived saw individuals released and connected with their families rather than detained. Airports became a front line against Trump’s travel ban.
The protests brought together longtime organizers with newly politicized and agitated individuals moved to act against the Islamophobic policy. Many protesters had ties to the seven countries included in Trump’s initial Muslim ban.
The airport protests also inspired other protest and strike activity: In New York City, the Taxi Workers Alliance, a 19,000-member union made up of largely Muslim taxi drivers, called an hour-long boycott of JFK airport pickups that day, and Yemeni-owned bodegas across the city’s five boroughs struck the next week. Also in the days that followed, over 3,000 tech workers — Comcast and Google employees — walked off the job in protest of the ban in several cities across the U.S.
Late that same night on January 28, a federal judge granted a stay on deportations for visa holders who had been detained upon entry, effectively freeing those who had been detained at airports. The protests had secured their first victory against the Muslim ban within hours and shattered the façade of the Trump administration’s invincibility.
While there have been thousands of protests since Trump took office in January, including powerful protests like the hundreds of Jewish activists who protested the detention of Mahmoud Khalil in a demonstration at Trump Tower, our movement must consider specific sites to protest the coming deportations, in particular airports and workplace strikes.
The detentions and deportations of Alawieh and Schmidt, and the likelihood of another iteration of the Muslim ban, demands a call for activists to organize at the airports once again. The airport protests offer tangible solidarity to those in detention, and push back against the impunity of both the Trump administration and CBP officials, like those detaining and torturing travelers coming through Boston. Airport protests can shut down terminals and prevent planes from departing — as done in San Francisco International Airport in 2017 — whether simply to disrupt business as usual and demand policy change, or to prevent the deportation of individuals set to be deported. And coupled with labor strikes — like a strike of Columbia University staff to demand Khalil’s return, or a strike of airport workers as Sara Nelson has previously threatened, with successful results after a mere threat — can apply the economic pressure and disruption needed to force a change in Trump’s draconian policies.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Shireen Akram-Boshar
Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.
Trucks being loaded with coal in Lianyungang, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province – Copyright AFP/File STR
