President Donald Trump has vowed to effectuate the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations.
The order hit hard on 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.
Their legal protection will be lost 30 days after the Department of Homeland Security’s order is established and propagated in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for 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 seek advice from an immigration lawyer immediately.
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 mirthless human rights records.
Biden proclaimed the plan, “safe and humane” way to ease pressure on the crowded US-Mexico border.
But the Department of Homeland Security emphasized on 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.
Trump last week invocated a 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.