Donald Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 migrants in immigration crackdown

President Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.

The order will be effective on April 24, according to a Federal Register notice.

The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the migrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.

Trump, a Republican, took steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office, including a push to deport record numbers of migrants in the US illegally.

He has argued that the legal entry parole programs launched under his Democratic predecessor overstepped the boundaries of federal law and called for their termination in a January 20 executive order.

Trump said on March 6 that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia.

Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities.

The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status.

Meanwhile, a US judge who temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members under a 1798 law says government lawyers have been “intemperate and disrespectful” in court filings, as he weighs whether officials violated the order.

Washington-based District Judge James Boasberg told a hearing he could not recall ever having heard government lawyers address him in the way the administration had in this case.

Boasberg has ordered Justice Department officials to explain why he should not find that they violated the March 15 order by failing to return two planes carrying the deportees that landed in El Salvador - where the migrants are being held - after he issued his ruling.

Trump has said he would not defy any court orders. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said his administration has the authority to “get bad people out of our country”.

At the hearing, Boasberg said he was considering modifying the block to allow for deporting anyone who admitted they were members of the gang. He did not make a final decision at the hearing.