A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Trump can end the protected status bestowed by Biden on about 430,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV).
The Appeals Court overruled a decision by a Biden-appointed judge in Washington, DC, who issued an order early in August blocking the move to end CHNV protected status.
Judge Jia Cobb had claimed that the administration’s move in March to eliminate CHNV protections is illegal and offers the migrants no due process and said it evinced irreparable harm for migrants.
In its ruling, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the previous judge’s claim of the risk of irreparable harm was not sufficient to block the administration’s policy change.
“We recognize the risks of irreparable harm persuasively laid out in the district court’s order: that parolees who lawfully arrived in this country were suddenly forced to choose between leaving in less than a month — a choice that potentially includes being separated from their families, communities, and lawful employment and returning to dangers in their home countries,” the judges said, according to the Associated Press. “But absent a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits, the risk of such irreparable harms cannot, by itself, support a stay.”
“In sum, we hold that the Plaintiffs have not made a strong showing that they are likely to succeed in showing that the Secretary’s decision to terminate the CHNV parole programs exceeded her discretion as authorized by the INA,” the judges added.
This is yet another higher court ruling overturning a lower court judge’s decision.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court even ruled that the administration had a legal right to end the CHNV program and allowed Trump’s officials to begin shutting the program down even as the appeal was ongoing.
SCOTUS, in a 7-2 decision with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting, ruled that Trump can end the parole pipeline while the case is pending appeal:
The April 15, 2025 order entered by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, case No. 1:25–cv–10495, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.
The Trump administration urged SCOTUS to allow officials to end the parole pipeline while the case made its way through lower courts, arguing that such courts have no authority to “needlessly upending critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry, vitiating core Executive Branch prerogatives, and undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election.”
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