The Trump administration is working to cancel the Biden-era “humanitarian parole” program that allowed more than 500,000 Venezuelans, Haitians and other migrants into the US.
The move would close a loophole that allowed migrants to fly into the country and stay. The policy change would revoke the legal status of migrants in the program, and make them targets of ICE deportation raids.
Roughly 530,000 migrants entered the US under the Biden administration program that allowed foreign nationals with sponsors living in the country to stay and work for up to two years.
It was open to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they arrived in the country by plane — an attempt to drive down illegal immigration during record surges at the border.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told The Post that the Biden admin “abused the parole system” turning it into “an unrecognizable shell of itself used for fraud and to exploit the immigration system.”
“The Trump Administration is restoring integrity back into our immigration system,” McLaughlin said.
Now, those migrants are being encouraged to “voluntarily leave now” with the offer that they “may” be able to enter legally in the future and “live the American dream,” she said.
But if they fail to leave “they will face the inevitable consequences,” she said.
She pointed to the tens of thousands of migrants who have been taken off the streets by ICE — with such arrests surging more than 600% in a single month.
“If aliens do not leave the country they will be tracked down and face additional financial penalty — and potentially criminal,” she added.
The Biden administration temporarily paused the program in mid-July over widespread fraud occurring among thousands of the migrants’ sponsors. Many listings were found to be using fake social security numbers or phone numbers — including those of dead people.
A review of the program had also found that many applications used the same physical address. “Some 100 addresses were listed on over 19,000 forms” and “many applications were submitted by the same IP address,” according to documents obtained by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The parole program started accepting Venezuelans in October 2022 and was expanded three months later to include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans— with the top three cities parolees flew into being Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and New York City.
Trump swiftly ended the program on his first day in office, stopping any new applications.
Before assuming his latest role as Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan previously said he worried that the migrants enrolled in the program by Biden would “more than likely … [be] staying here forever” given the availability various legal avenues allowing them to apply for protected status and permanent residency.
Roughly 200,000 migrants who don’t have any protections aside from the parole would likely have their legal residency status in the US immediately cancelled, according to Manhattan Institute fellow Daniel Di Martino.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) also previously called on the Biden admin to immediately end the program in light of the fraud.
“This is exactly what happens when you create an unlawful mass-parole program in order to spare your administration the political embarrassment and bad optics of overrun borders,” he said at the time.
Trump has already moved to end another program that protected hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Venezuelan migrants from deportation and allowed them to work in the country.
On Monday, immigrant rights groups sued to stop the policy change to the Temporary Protected Status program — which is designed to protect refugees from countries facing political and humanitarian upheaval.
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