End to humanitarian parole program could impact 'thousands' of Utah immigrants, lawyer says

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

The end of a humanitarian parole program could affect thousands of Utah immigrants.
The programs, benefitting 532,000 people across the country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, would end April 24 per a Trump administration proposal.
The draft order says the initiatives haven't had their intended impact and don't fit with Trump's immigration policies and strategies.

SALT LAKE CITY — Another pocket of immigrants from Venezuela and three other countries face an uncertain future in Utah and the rest of the United States with the looming end of a humanitarian parole program.

Nationally, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security decision is expected to impact up to 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have come under the program's parameters since its launch under President Joe Biden on Oct. 12, 2022. The revocation of the county parole programs stems from the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, calling for more action to halt illegal immigration.

The decision to end the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela programs by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, set to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register and take effect on April 24, could impact "thousands" across Utah, estimates Carlos Trujillo. He's an immigration attorney based in South Jordan. "It's a good number of people that are here in Utah with the humanitarian parole. Specifically, people from Venezuela and people from Nicaragua are the most that you're going to find here in Utah," he said.

Trujillo has heard of a potential court challenge to the decision in Massachusetts. But if it takes effect as planned, those here under the programs' parameters would have until April 24 to leave the country or possibly face deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border enforcement, "generally intends to remove promptly aliens who entered the United States under the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela parole programs who do not depart the United States before their parole termination date and do not have any lawful basis to remain in the United States," reads the draft version of the order.

The CHNV decision is the latest of a series of moves by the Trump administration meant to trim the number of immigrants in the United States. Noem in February reversed a Biden-era decision granting temporary protected status to some 350,000 Venezuelans across the nation, potentially putting some at heightened risk of deportation. That decision, to take effect April 7, faces a legal challenge and was the focus of a hearing in a U.S. district court in San Francisco, California, on Monday, according to Reuters. Temporary protected status is typically granted to people from select countries facing political upheaval or natural disasters.

Trump has also beefed up security at the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal entry by immigrants and increased efforts to seek out, detain and deport immigrants in the United States illegally via increased enforcement action.

Trujillo said the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela programs had allowed eligible immigrants with a sponsor in the United States to come to the country, after vetting, where they could live and work for up to two years. "It was a legal program, and it's very important for people to know this," Trujillo said.

Either way, its looming end is the latest in a series of moves under Trump ostensibly aimed at removing immigrants here illegally who have committed crimes that are, in fact, impacting some without criminal backgrounds, he charges.

"The frustration of many people right now is that we were told mass deportation was because they wanted to get rid of the criminals of the immigrant community, and it ain't like that," Trujillo said. The increased moves are impacting people working in the country legally, paying taxes and "doing everything by the books."

He worries the next target of the Trump administration could be immigrants with claims of asylum due to persecution in their home countries. "The reality is that their main focus is mass deportation, regardless of the situation of the person," Trujillo said.

On the flip side, the draft notice ending Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela parole programs notes that the Biden-era initiatives haven't had their intended impact — controlling immigration flows. What's more, they don't fit with Trump's immigration policies and strategies.

"These programs do not serve a significant public benefit, are not necessary to reduce levels of illegal immigration, did not sufficiently mitigate the domestic effects of illegal immigration, are not serving their intended purposes and are inconsistent with the administration's foreign policy goals," reads the draft notice. Humanitarian parole decisions, it reads, should be handled on "a case-by-case basis."

More specifically, the notice says the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela programs have shifted the problem points in dealing with immigration issues from the U.S.-Mexico border to further flung points inside the United States. The programs "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," it reads.

Moreover, the surge of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border that gave rise to the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela programs has subsided under Trump. "Whatever the need for these programs may have been in late 2022, the situation at the southwest border now, and the set of tools implemented by DHS to deter illegal immigration, are quite different," reads the notice.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.