Donald Trump’s government announced on Friday that it will revoke the legal status in the United States of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, giving them weeks to leave the country. After returning to the White House, Trump promised to carry out the largest deportation campaign in the history of the United States and to curb immigration, mainly from Latin Americans.
The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who arrived in the United States under a plan launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January of the following year. They will lose their legal protection 30 days after the Department of Homeland Security publishes the order in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday, meaning migrants affected by the measure will have to leave the United States before April 24, unless they have obtained another residence permit.
Welcome.US, an NGO that helps people seek refuge in the United States, advised those affected by the measure to “immediately” seek legal counsel. The humanitarian program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, known as CHNV, from the initials of the countries, allowed the entry into the United States for two years of up to 30,000 immigrants per month from the four countries.
Biden promoted the plan as a “safe and humane” way to relieve pressure on the crowded border between the United States and Mexico. But the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that the plan was “temporary.”
Chaos
Nicolette Glazer, an immigration expert lawyer, said the order affects the “vast majority” of the half million immigrants who entered the United States under the CHNV scheme. “Only 75,000 affirmative asylum applications were filed, so the vast majority of CHNV parolees will find themselves without status, without work permits and subject to removal,” she posted on X. “The chaos will be incredible.”
Karen Tumlin, director of the immigrant rights group Justice Action Center, denounced that the Trump administration was “breaking a commitment that the federal government made to hundreds of thousands” of migrants. “Revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of CHNV beneficiaries is going to cause unnecessary chaos and distress to families and communities across the country,” she explained.
Last weekend, Trump invoked an 18th-century law, which had only been used in times of war, to fly more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador, whose president, Nayib Bukele, has offered Washington to house migrant or American inmates in his prisons for less money.
