Judge Indira Talwani of U.S. District Court in Boston signaled Friday that she expects to halt—at least temporarily—the Trump administration’s plan to end Family Reunification Parole protections for relatives of U.S. citizens and green card holders. Talwani said she planned to issue a temporary restraining order after a hearing on the lawsuit, but she did not say when the order would be issued.
Talwani’s remarks came as attorneys sparred over whether the administration followed required procedures when it moved to end the program. The court case is part of a broader effort by the administration to end temporary legal protections for multiple groups, and it comes just over a week after another judge ruled that hundreds of people from South Sudan may live and work legally in the United States.
The program at the center of the lawsuit is called Family Reunification Parole, or FRP. Lawyers said it affects more than 10,000 family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders, with beneficiaries arriving from countries including Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras. Most of them, attorneys said, are set to lose the protections by Jan. 14 after Homeland Security terminated the program late last year.
The lawsuit, as presented in court, involves five plaintiffs, but the plaintiffs’ lawyers said they are seeking a ruling that would apply to everyone covered by the FRP program. In their motion, the plaintiffs said the people came to the United States “to get a jump-start on their new lives,” typically bringing immediate family members with them. They also said that since arriving, FRP parolees have obtained employment authorization documents, found jobs, and enrolled their children in school.
In court, the government argued that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has authority to terminate any parole program and that the administration provided adequate notice by publishing the termination in the federal registry. The government also argued that ending FRP was necessary on national security grounds because beneficiaries had not been “property vetted,” and that resources used to maintain the program could be better used in other immigration programs.
Government attorney Katie Rose Talley told the court that parole “can be terminated at any time,” and she said, “That is what is being done. There is nothing unlawful about that.” Talwani indicated she accepted that the government can end the program, but she challenged how it did so—specifically the adequacy of the notice the affected people received.
During the hearing, Talwani pressed for evidence that people were alerted through a written notice such as a letter or email, rather than through the federal registry alone. “The government argued that just announcing in the federal registry that it was ending the program was sufficient,” the reporting said, and Talwani responded by demanding the administration show how it alerted people in writing.
Justin Cox, an attorney with the Justice Action Center who argued for the plaintiffs, said the administration’s approach was inequitable. “The government, having invited people to apply, is now laying traps between those people and getting the green card,” Cox said. He argued that the government’s decision placed people in an unfair position by ending the protections that had been offered.
Talwani also acknowledged the practical situation facing the people involved. “I understand why plaintiffs feel like they came here and made all these plans and were going to be here for a very long time,” Talwani said, adding that she is “saying to you that, we as Americans, the United States needs to” follow the proper process.
The FRP case reflects the wider legal uncertainty surrounding temporary immigration protections during the Trump administration. In May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants for now, raising the number of people newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million. That decision followed the court allowing the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.
In the earlier Supreme Court action, the justices lifted a lower-court order that had kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, according to the report. The Supreme Court’s decision was issued as a brief order on its emergency docket and did not explain its reasoning; two justices publicly dissented.