Judge will halt Trump administration from ending humanitarian parole for people from four countries

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge said Thursday that she will prevent the Trump administration from ordering hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status to leave the country later this month.

The ruling is a significant, although perhaps temporary, setback for the administration as it dismantles Biden-era policies that created new and expanded pathways for people to live in the United States, generally for two years with work authorization.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said she would issue a stay on an order for more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to leave the country, sparing them until the case advances to the next phase. Their permits were to be canceled April 24.

During a hearing, Talwani repeatedly questioned the government's assertion that it could end humanitarian parole for the four nationalities. She argued that immigrants in the program who are here legally now face an option of “fleeing the country” or staying and “risk losing everything.”

“The nub of the problem here is that the secretary, in cutting short the parole period afforded to these individuals, has to have a reasoned decision,” Talwani said, adding that the explanation for ending the program was “based on an incorrect reading of the law.”

“There was a deal and now that deal has been undercut,” she said later in the hearing.

Last month, the administration revoked legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in 30 days.

They arrived with financial sponsors, applying online and paying their own airfare for two-year permits to live and work in the U.S. During that time, the beneficiaries needed to find other legal pathways if they wanted to stay longer in the U.S. Parole is a temporary status.

President Donald Trump has been ending legal pathways for immigrants to come to the U.S., implementing campaign promises to deport millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally.

Outside court, immigration advocates, including Guerline Jozef, founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said attacks on this program contradict the Trump administration’s strategy on immigration.

“We hear the narrative of people coming her illegally and the administration wanting to erase illegal immigration,” Jozef said. “But, we clearly see today that is not the case. Even those people who have legal status, are paying their taxes and working are under attack.”

Cesar Baez, an activist of the political opposition in Venezuela, said he feared for his life and left his country to come to the U.S. under the sponsorship of a doctor. He arrived under the humanitarian parole program in December 2022 and, for the last year, has been working as a producer at a media outlet in Washington.

He has applied for a working visa as another way to get legal status and has also requested asylum, but those processes have also been paused under the Trump administration.

For him, the judge’s announcement means hope.

“It is very important for me to have protections and not be removed to Venezuela,” said Baez, 24. “I have no doubt that if I set foot in the country, I would immediately be imprisoned.”

Zamora, a 34-year-old Cuban woman who asked to be identified only by her last name due to fears of being detained and deported, received the judge’s news as relief.

“I was terrified of being left without a work permit,” said Zamora, whose parole and work permit expire in September. “We are people who, in order to come here, have gone through several background checks, and the government take away our status as if we had been criminals and entered illegally.”

Advocates, who called the administration’s action “unprecedented," said it would result in people losing their legal status and ability to work and argued that it violated federal rule-making.

The government's lawyer, Brian Ward, argued in court that ending the program doesn't mean that individuals couldn’t be considered for other immigration programs. He also said the government wouldn't prioritize them for deportation — something Talwani found suspect, given they could be arrested if they happened to go to the hospital or were involved in a car accident.

The end of temporary protections for these immigrants has generated little political blowback among Republicans other than three Cuban-American representatives from Florida who called for preventing the deportation of the Venezuelans affected. One of them, Rep. Maria Salazar of Miami, also joined about 200 congressional Democrats this week in cosponsoring a bill that would enable them to become lawful permanent residents.

This story has been updated to correct the name of one of the plaintiffs. It is Haitian Bridge Alliance, not Haitian Bridge Foundation. Associated Press writer Gisela Salomon contributed to this report from Miami.

Immigration advocates speak Thursday, April 10, 2025, outside federal court in Boston, after a hearing aiming to halt the Trump administration's from stopping a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to temporarily live in the country. (AP Photos/Michael Casey)

Immigration advocates speak Thursday, April 10, 2025, outside federal court in Boston, after a hearing aiming to halt the Trump administration's from stopping a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to temporarily live in the country. (AP Photos/Michael Casey)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference to announce the re-launch of the VOICE office, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, with families of victims behind her, at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Department of Homeland Security seal is seen on the podium at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A 9-year-old girl with Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, who was born in Venezuela, but who fluently speaks only English and is in the gifted program at her school, watches TV in her family's apartment, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A former Polish justice minister who faces prosecution in his homeland over alleged abuse of power said Monday that he has been granted asylum in Hungary.

Zbigniew Ziobro was a key figure in the government led by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party that ran Poland between 2015 and 2023. That administration established political control over key judicial institutions by stacking higher courts with friendly judges and punishing its critics with disciplinary action or assignments to far-away locations.

Current Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government came to power more than two years ago with ambitions to roll back the changes, but efforts to undo them have been blocked by two successive presidents aligned with the national right.

In October, prosecutors requested the lifting of Ziobro's parliamentary immunity to press charges against him. They allege among other things that Ziobro misused a fund for victims of violence, including for the purchase of Israeli Pegasus surveillance software.

Tusk’s party says Law and Justice used Pegasus to spy illegally on political opponents while in power. Ziobro says he acted lawfully.

Hungary, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has hosted several politicians close to Law and Justice while Polish authorities were seeking them.

In a lengthy post on X Monday, Ziobro wrote that he had “decided to accept the asylum granted to me by the government of Hungary due to the political persecution in Poland.”

“I have decided to remain abroad until genuine guarantees of the rule of law are restored in Poland,” he said. “I believe that instead of acquiescing to being silenced and subjected to a torrent of lies — which I would have no opportunity to refute — I can do more by fighting the mounting lawlessness in Poland.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Budapest on Monday that Hungarian authorities have granted asylum to “several” individuals who would face political persecution in Poland, according to his ministry. He declined to specify their names.

In an English-language post on X, Tusk wrote that “the former Minister of Justice(!), Mr. Ziobro, who was the mastermind of the political corruption system, has asked the government of Victor Orbán for political asylum.”

“A logical choice,” he added.

FILE - The leader of the Polish junior coalition partners Zbigniew Ziobro, speaks to reporters alongside in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)