The US adds half a million new undocumented immigrants: ‘It’s unfair that if Biden gave me parole, Trump comes and takes it away’

Donald Trump has said more than once that the only way to immigrate to the United States and avoid deportation is to do so legally. But even that isn’t stopping him. On March 25, 532,000 Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Haitians who entered the country legally during the Joe Biden administration will become undocumented. The U.S. government will eliminate the legal status known as humanitarian parole and the work visas of beneficiaries and their families, who are given a few weeks to self-deport and leave the country. If they don’t do so within 30 days, they risk being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Since Trump came to power two months ago, no migrant can rest easy. Humanitarian parole — intended for countries experiencing conflict or social, political, or economic crisis — began in 2022 and protected those granted deportation. Most could apply for an extension of their permit when it expired or request another type of status or asylum to remain in the United States. As of January 22, it had been granted to half a million people whom the president now considers “inadmissible.”

Behind the numbers lie the lives of families and individuals who left everything behind to reach a country that opened its doors to them and now deems them unworthy of remaining. Some plan to leave to avoid the risk of detention, others intend to go into hiding, some are relying on the courts to stop this latest outrage against immigration, while others are not even considering returning to their home country.

“The world has become too small for us Venezuelans”

Venezuelan, 39 years old

The story of Carlos (who prefers not to give his real name) is that of a Venezuelan immigrant with two countries of arrival. The first was Chile, seven years ago, to which he emigrated with his wife and first child. There they tried to put down roots. They had a daughter and lived “a good life” in Santiago, but the xenophobia that was unleashed against Venezuelans ended up expelling them. “The day I heard a Chilean tell his son not to play with mine while he was ranting about my nationality, I said to myself, ‘This is not the place I want my children to grow up in,’” he says.

That’s how a relative of his wife activated humanitarian parole for the entire family, and after the paperwork and approval, they landed in Nashville, Tennessee, in December 2023. “We came to the United States looking for a country that was kinder to Venezuelans, and now Trump arrives and it turns out he hates us,” he laments. The couple, who have already managed to settle in the United States and begun making plans for the future, now feel on the ropes. “We just signed a second lease, bought a car, have the kids in school, two jobs, a routine, and now it turns out we have to leave. I can’t believe it.” Carlos’s main fear is remaining illegally and risking deportation. “They could expel me or my wife separately, which would mean family separation. Furthermore, the cruelty with which they deported Venezuelans to El Salvador is terrifying. We left Venezuela because it’s a country without the rule of law, and now it turns out the Trump administration doesn’t respect human rights and arrests and deports immigrants with no criminal record. This is starting to look more like our country than we’d like,” he says.

The couple is now exploring other options to try to avoid losing their legal residency and the work permit that comes with it. “The hardest thing is that we have to endure because we can't emigrate a third time. The world has become too small for us Venezuelans,” they say.

“I’m not going anywhere. If I go back to Haiti, they’ll kill me”

Haitian, 43 years old

Goliath (not his real name) is terrified. He arrived in June 2024 from Haiti thanks to humanitarian parole. He was fleeing certain death. “I’m not going anywhere. If I go back, they’ll kill me,” he says. His brother, a U.S. citizen, sponsored him to leave the country. His job in the public sector is a death sentence in a country dominated by gangs and violence. “They know my face. If they deport me, they’ll kill me,” he insists. The cancellation of the program affects him doubly. His wife and daughter also applied for parole, but the authorization hadn’t arrived yet. And now it won’t. “I feel very stressed and depressed,” he admits in a telephone conversation. “My wife and daughter are in areas controlled by gangs, who commit rapes, kidnappings, and murders every day; they can kill them at any moment.”

Neither the national police nor UN-backed security forces have been able to stem the violence unleashed a year ago by the Viv Ansanm gang uprising. More than a million people have been displaced within the country. The capital, Port-au-Prince, is under siege. In the last month, some 60,000 people have fled the violence.

Goliath had found peace working as a security guard for a community organization in Miami, Florida. “I was helping build this society, working and paying taxes,” he says. Now, his life has been turned upside down. He no longer hopes for family reunification, but he also can’t go back. He refuses to self-deport under the CBP Home program, which the Trump administration is promoting to deport undocumented immigrants. His hope is that the courts will stop the program’s rescission: “My life depends on the decision of the administration and the courts.”

“It’s unfair that if Biden gave it to me, Trump comes and takes it away”

Cuban, 40 years old

When Mónica’s uncle proposed bringing her to the United States through parole, she wasn’t keen. She was 40 years old and believed that the older you get, the worse it is to emigrate. She accepted for the sake of her children. In Cuba, she and her husband worked as computer technicians at a state-owned company and earned the equivalent of $50 a month between them. They paid $30 in rent. “That’s what we had to survive on. It was impossible. I had to work on the street to make ends meet, and even then it wasn’t enough.” So when she took her eight- and five-year-old children to Walmart, and she watched them happy among the toys and candy, she concluded it was worth the sacrifice. “It was crazy; they filled a cart with stuff. And I was scared because I thought they were going to charge me a thousand dollars. And when they charged me $300, I said, “Ugh, that’s my salary for a week here.”

In the Texas town where she lives, Mónica has worked as a waitress, cleaning houses, and on a chicken farm. The children arrive home from school by bus and spend almost the entire day alone, as she leaves at night and returns at night. Her husband still lives in Cuba and has no way to leave. He never received parole. She’s saving as much as she can to see how they can reunite. “But even so, it’s worth it,” she says. “The environment here is better overall, the school is good, the children are adjusting, they’re doing well, they have a better future. They’ve found their space here. Over there, they would be starving. The Walmart incident seems irrelevant, but when you grow up in poverty, you know what it feels like.”

Since she entered legally, she quickly obtained her work permit. They now have 90 days to apply for residency through the Cuban Adjustment Act, but with Trump’s new order, she loses all benefits. “I’m afraid they’ll kick me out of the factory for losing my work permit. Imagine, how are we going to live? It’s unfair that, if Biden gave it to me, Trump comes and takes it away.” “I’ll do everything I can to not take my children with me. Try to be as legal as possible and seek all the resources I can to be here. Raise money for a lawyer, I don’t know. But I have to keep going. I don’t know what will happen if they send us back. I want to be optimistic and think they won’t.”

Among the total of 532,000 people affected, there is a group of Cubans who are exempt from Trump's new measure. These are those who entered the country more than a year ago and had time to apply for the still-current Cuban Adjustment Act, passed by Congress in 1966, which allows Cuban citizens to obtain permanent residency while legally remaining in the United States for one year and one day.

“It’s been a very hard blow for my family”

Nicaraguan, 42 years old

This is her job: entering the meat processing plant in sub-zero temperatures, with no windows, wearing three coats. Standing in front of a machine that works like a treadmill and packaging sausages. Ten hours a day, Monday through Friday. At first, her arms went numb. Now, five months in, it’s worse; sometimes they don’t respond.

Doris studied civil engineering in Managua, Nicaragua, but with two daughters and a basic salary, it wasn't enough even for food. Her cousin in Texas helped them get their parole, and she arrived with the hope of working hard during the two years the humanitarian program allowed, while her daughters, ages 10 and 18, learned English and explored another world. She also planned to find a way to legalize her status. If she couldn't, her plan was to return to Managua with enough savings to start her own business.

It’s only been seven months, and Doris is already thinking about returning voluntarily because she doesn’t want to risk being deported. But she’s also thinking involuntarily, because she doesn’t really want to leave. She’s not willing to face the trauma of being detained as a criminal. She wants her daughters to suffer the same fate even less. Nor would she like to have to hide, because she hasn’t done anything wrong. She simply arrived in a country that gave her the opportunity to enter legally, and since then, she’s done nothing but work. “I respect myself too much to have to go through that.”

Her plan now is to work as much overtime as she can because as soon as she feels she's in danger, she'll grab her daughters, her suitcases, and her savings to make the return trip to Central America. “It's frustrating and painful. We came with the hope of improving our quality of life, and now we find ourselves in an uncertain situation. We face the challenge of returning without the resources we expected, and the uncertainty of what to do in Nicaragua when we arrive.” What pains her most, she says, is the change that's coming for the girls. “They've adapted here, especially the oldest, who was already exploring opportunities to study and work. There, they won't have the same opportunities or stability, and that fills me with anguish. It's been a very hard blow for my family because we had bet everything on this opportunity.”

“This is another cruel, racist policy that seeks only to separate families”

Venezuelan, 50 years old

For this story, she's going by the name Corina, because this 50-year-old Venezuelan is afraid to speak her own mind. She's been living in Miami for a year and a half after resisting emigrating for several years. In Barquisimeto, her hometown, she saw her sister leave first, moving to Florida with her husband and children eight years ago; and then her eldest son, who went to Argentina to enroll in university. She was left to care for her elderly mother, diagnosed with Alzheimer's. "The situation in Venezuela these past few years has been difficult, and with a mother in this condition, everything becomes unbearable," she says.

Her sister sponsored her application, and she and her mother received humanitarian parole. “Due to my family situation, this time always seemed insufficient, but you arrive with the hope of staying. I always felt welcome, until now,” she explains. These 18 months have allowed Corina to provide the best medical care for her mother and work in the family business, but now she faces losing legal residency and risking deportation.

“It’s unthinkable for me to leave at this moment. How can I return to Venezuela with my mother in a wheelchair, needing constant care, and exposed to the regime’s repression? I don’t understand how they can justify leaving half a million immigrants in an illegal situation. This is another cruel, racist policy that seeks only to separate families. I’m hopeful that an upcoming court ruling can restore our protection,” she says.

“How can this man say that parole is illegal?”

Cuban couple, over 65 years old

“I’ve been going crazy over the weekend,” says Viviana, who uses a pseudonym as she’s afraid to reveal her identity, while driving through Miami. Viviana is Cuban and has been in the United States for four years. She entered through the southern border with her husband and daughter on Form I-220A, a provisional parole order. They immediately applied for political asylum. Viviana thought she wouldn’t need to defend her family’s case in court, that the three of them could benefit from the Cuban Adjustment Act after spending a year and a day on U.S. soil. But it’s been three years since they filed for green cards, and they haven’t received a response. Because of this, they haven’t been able to leave the United States in all this time, and Viviana decided to bring her parents from Cuba through the humanitarian parole program.

Viviana is worried for her parents. The couple, both over 65, landed in Miami last May on a flight their daughter paid for, with their documents in order. “My parents’ situation is crueler than mine,” she says. “Mine was a mistake at the border, but my parents were sitting in Havana waiting for approval that USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) made. How can this man say that’s illegal?”

Viviana has contacted several lawyers, and all of them have recommended she file a case for political asylum. They’ve also asked her to sign a document releasing the lawyers from liability for her statements or any possible lies she may have made in obtaining asylum. She was also asked for a payment of $2,000 per person. Viviana asserts that she prefers hiding her parents than doing something wrong: “I’m not going to lie. My parents didn’t come as political refugees. That’s fraud. I can’t afford to commit fraud against my parents.”

All her mother says is that she doesn’t want to return to Cuba because she won’t see her daughter again. Her father says nothing; he has high blood pressure. “And while I’m telling you this, some of my relatives have a Trump flag in their house.”

“Every day I think about being deported”

Cuban, 43 years old

In a month, Owarys Cruz could leave his job as a waiter at the Maíz y Agave restaurant in Miami’s vibrant Coral Gables neighborhood. Cruz has worked the night shift Thursday through Sunday for a year, serving all kinds of dishes from an extensive Mexican menu. Now, he’s asking himself the question that thousands like him must be asking: “What do I do when my work permit expires?” It’s been hard for him to get here, to a position as a waiter after working as a construction assistant or washing dishes in the kitchens of several restaurants in the city. At the end of May, it will be two years since he arrived in the United States from Cuba. He still remembers how he cried when he boarded a plane in Havana that landed minutes later in Florida. It was the shortest and longest trip in his 43 years. “I was leaving my family behind, my children, who are my life,” he says.

At the time, Cruz wasn’t considering leaving Cuba, but a friend called to inform him of the possibility of a direct flight, a legal and relatively easy entry into the United States. In January 2023, the Biden administration extended the humanitarian parole program to Cubans. The move came amid the island’s largest recent economic and political crisis: its people were emigrating en masse, an unprecedented stampede.

Cruz said yes to his friend, and by April he had been accepted as a beneficiary of the program. By May he was embarking on his journey to Miami. He arrived with all the protection that parole guaranteed him. He never thought that, almost two years later, the new Trump administration would revoke it. “Every day there is uncertainty, a threat, an uproar. How can you not be scared with everything that’s happening?” he says. Cruz is close to receiving a green card thanks to the Cuban Adjustment Act. However, he remains afraid. Since arriving from Cuba, he hasn’t stopped thinking about the possibility of being deported. “I think about it every day,” he confesses.

Mónica Baro participated in the preparation of this report from Miami.

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