Judge Pauses Trump Policy Ending Family Reunification for Some Migrants

The policy applied to migrants from some Central and South American countries who were awaiting visas.

A federal judge on Saturday paused a Trump administration policy halting an immigration program that allowed migrants from some Central and South American countries to reunite with their family members in the United States while awaiting visas.

In a five-page order, Judge Indira Talwani of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts granted a 14-day stay of the Trump administration’s decision last month to cancel the immigration program, known as the Family Reunification Parole Program, while legal challenges continue.

The order is the latest rebuke in a protracted battle between the Trump administration and the courts over a series of Biden-era immigration policies that Mr. Trump has attempted to cancel.

In a statement on Dec. 12, the Department of Homeland Security said it would end family reunification parole programs for migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras. The agency said the programs had “security gaps caused by insufficient vetting that malicious and fraudulent actors could exploit to enter the United States.”

It added that migrants currently enrolled in an F.R.P. program who did not have a pending permanent residence application would lose their legal status on Jan. 14.

On Dec. 29, a group of migrants challenged the Department of Homeland Security over the programs’ termination. They argued that D.H.S. “fell well short of satisfying their most basic obligations” of due process when it canceled the programs.

In the challenge, lawyers representing the migrants estimated that more than 10,000 migrants, more than a quarter of whom are children, would lose their legal status in the U.S. as a result of the administration’s decision.

In Judge Talwani’s order, she said that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the programs, failed to provide adequate written notice to the affected migrants after the administration tried to cancel them.

The department had claimed in a Dec. 15 Federal Register notice, which explained how the programs’ termination would be administered, that the notice itself “satisfies the requirement that DHS provide written notice upon the termination of parole.”

But Judge Talwani said that “D.H.S. is mistaken.” Judge Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, added that the administration’s actions would “pose irreparable harm” to the migrants who had entered the U.S. through the programs and had not yet received permanent legal status.

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