President Trump moved on Monday to toss out a Biden-era program that allowed migrants fleeing four troubled nations to fly into the United States and remain in the country temporarily, part of a sweeping first-day crackdown on immigration.
The program, known as humanitarian parole and introduced by the Biden administration in early 2023, allowed migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela to fly into the United States if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks. Migrants who entered under the program could stay for up to two years, unless they found other ways to stay long term.
As of late last year, more than 500,000 migrants had entered the country through the initiative.
The program, which Mr. Trump ordered the head of the Department of Homeland Security to end, served as one of two major legal pathways the Biden administration put in place to try to discourage migrants from crossing into the country illegally. The Trump administration already moved earlier Monday to shut down the other program — a government app that allowed migrants to schedule appointments to enter the country at legal ports of entry.
“These processes — a safe and orderly way to reach the United States — have resulted in a significant reduction in the number of these individuals encountered at our southern border,” Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Biden administration’s homeland security secretary, said last spring. “It is a key element of our efforts to address the unprecedented level of migration throughout our hemisphere.”
Republican lawmakers viewed the program as a way for migrants with no other access to the United States a chance to enter the country for up to two years and obtain work permits.
“Here’s an idea: Don’t fly millions of illegals aliens from failed states thousands of miles away into small towns across the American Heartland,” Stephen Miller, the architect of much of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy, said on social media in September.
Texas, along with other Republican-led states, sued to end the program and failed. But the Biden administration had already said in October that it would allow the permission for migrants from the four countries to lapse after their two years ran out, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to find other methods to stay in the country or face deportation.
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