Nate Raymond
BOSTON, April 24 (Reuters) – The Trump administration is again planning to end the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants after a judge blocked its initial effort to revoke U.S. residency permits granted by Democratic President Joe Biden.
The government detailed its intentions in documents filed in Boston federal court, where a judge ruled in March that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully by terminating the legal status of more than 900,000 people allowed to live in the United States after using the Biden-era app CBP One.
Judge Allison Burroughs on Friday scheduled a hearing for May 6 to consider barring the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out its program.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under Biden, immigrants are generally granted two years of humanitarian parole after using CBP One, an app that allows them to make an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
After Republican President Donald Trump returned to the White House, many noncitizens who were paroled through the CBP One process received an email from the Department of Homeland Security in April 2025 saying that parole was being terminated and “it was time to leave the United States.”
Burroughs, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, concluded last month that DHS needed to reverse the parole termination, saying the department failed to provide necessary records showing officials determined the purpose of parole had been achieved.
The Justice Department told Burroughs this week that while the government was complying with her order, it was also issuing new parole termination notices to the immigrants, according to a Tuesday memo from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott.
The memo has not been made public, but according to the Justice Department, Scott explained why he believed “parole is no longer appropriate for these aliens.”
Attorneys for Democracy Forward and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, representing immigrants challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s actions, urged Burroughs in a filing Thursday to intervene and stop what they called a “willful evasion of complying with court orders.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Nia Williams)
