A federal court in Massachusetts has stepped in to pause the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to shut down Family Reunification Parole programs affecting migrants from seven countries, citing concerns that recipients were not properly warned before losing their legal status.
In a five-page order issued Saturday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani approved an emergency request for relief and imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order. The ruling halts DHS from ending several country-specific FRP programs while the court reviews whether the agency followed required procedures.
The Family Reunification Parole program enables certain relatives of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents to enter the country on a temporary basis while awaiting immigrant visas. That process often stretches on for years, leaving families separated in the meantime.
DHS announced in December that it intended to terminate FRP programs covering migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, along with their immediate family members. In defending the move, the agency argued the programs had strayed from their original purpose.
“This administration is ending the abuse of humanitarian parole which allowed poorly vetted aliens to circumvent the traditional parole process. Parole was never intended to be used in this way, and DHS is returning parole to a case-by-case basis as intended by Congress. Ending the FRP programs is a necessary return to common-sense policies and a return to America First,” read a press release from the agency.
The DHS also stated that it would issue individual notices to affected parole recipients, informing them that both their parole status and related work authorization were being revoked. The terminations were scheduled to take effect on Jan. 14, with an exception carved out for recipients who had filed a Form I-485 application for permanent residency by Dec. 15, 2025, and whose cases were still pending.
Judge Talwani, however, found that DHS likely fell short of its obligation to provide individualized written notice before ending recipients’ status. In her order, she said there was little indication that parolees were actually notified through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services online accounts or by mail.
“The Federal Register Notice opined that ‘all FRP parolees under the modernized programs should have a USCIS online account’ and that ‘DHS will . . . provide individual notice to each parolee through their USCIS online account,’” the federal judge explained.
“But nothing in the record before the court suggests that most, let alone all, parolees do in fact have such accounts or when notice via such accounts was provided to the parolees.”
As part of the temporary restraining order, Talwani directed DHS to submit records detailing how it reached its decision by Jan. 13. She also set an accelerated briefing schedule, requiring the government to file its response by Jan. 15, with plaintiffs given until Jan. 20 to submit their reply, according to a FoxNews report.
