BOSTON— A federal appeals court in Boston turned down a legal challenge by immigrant rights groups on Friday. This meant that the Trump administration’s decision to end the temporary legal status of about 430,000 migrants was upheld. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ judgment goes against an earlier order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not have the power to halt the immigration “parole” program.
Immigrant advocacy groups and political analysts have been keenly following the case, which is about a program started by former Democratic President Joe Biden. The Biden administration started giving Venezuelans who flew to the U.S. two years of parole in 2022. They had to pass security checks and have a U.S. financial sponsor. In 2023, the program grew to include people from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. These programs gave release to almost 532,000 people between October 2022 and January 2025.
The Trump administration, led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, tried to end these parole programs in March. This affected around 430,000 migrants. Immigrant rights groups quickly spoke out against this measure.
Judge Gustavo Gelpí, who wrote the verdict for the three-judge panel, said that the administration’s action had put the parolees in a tough spot. He said that Noem’s decision “forced parolees who entered the United States lawfully to have to choose suddenly between returning to the dangers in their home countries or staying in the United States and risk being detained and deported.”
Gelpí nevertheless thought that the plaintiffs’ lawyers had not shown that Noem did not have the power to discontinue the program under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Three Democratic presidents chose all three justices on the appeals court panel. This makes the legal dispute around the verdict even more complicated.
The U.S. Supreme Court had already placed Judge Talwani’s decision on hold in May, letting the parole terminations go into force while the case was still going on. The Justice Department used this maneuver as an example when they told the appeals court to “reject the plaintiffs’ brazen request to defy the Supreme Court.”
Esther Sung, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the immigrant rights group Justice Action Center, said the verdict on Friday was “devastating,” but she also said it was “narrow.” She was hopeful that “there’s still room for us to win as the case goes on and gets to a final judgment.”
The verdict has not yet been remarked on by the Department of Homeland Security.