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2025-2026

Closed Doors, Law Still Standing

From the end of CBP One to the hold on case files: Cubans in 2025 and 2026

Updated 20 min read66 sources cited

At night, a Coast Guard boat comes alongside a makeshift vessel; crew members in orange vests hand out life jackets to the people aboard.
Crew from the Coast Guard cutter Manowar hand out life jackets to Cuban migrants on a makeshift vessel 15 miles southwest of Gun Cay, Bahamas, February 7, 2025. All 16 people aboard were repatriated to Cuba.Credit: PO3 Nicholas Strasburg / U.S. Coast Guard. Public domain (U.S. federal government work).

Between January 20, 2025 and November 2026, the United States government dismantled, one after another, the routes by which Cubans had arrived in the preceding years: CBP One appointments, humanitarian parole with a sponsor, the family reunification program and entry as immigrants. On the island, the cutoff of oil and a chain of nationwide blackouts deepened the crisis, and Cuba's own official statistics recorded a loss of 313,414 inhabitants in 2025 alone1. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 was neither repealed nor amended. What changed was everything around it: who can arrive to meet its requirements, how much the process costs and how long it takes.

Noon on January 20

At noon Eastern time on January 20, 2025, the CBP One app stopped working as a way to request an appointment at the border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) withdrew the function that allowed people to book a slot at eight ports of entry on the southern border and announced the next day that all pending appointments had been canceled2.

That same day President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14165, Securing Our Borders, whose section 7 directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to "terminate all categorical parole programs that are contrary to the policies of the United States"3. He also signed Proclamation 10886, which declared a national emergency at the southern border4. On January 24, DHS published a notice that restored expedited removal to its full statutory reach: from 6 p.m. on January 21, it could be applied anywhere in the country to anyone who could not show at least two years of presence in the United States5.

For Cubans, the combination had a precise meaning. The Cuban Adjustment Act requires that a person have been "inspected and admitted or paroled" and have been physically present in the country for at least one year6. The routes opened in 2023 and 2024, humanitarian parole with a sponsor and CBP One appointments, produced exactly that parole (see Humanitarian Parole). Closing them did not touch the statute, but it narrowed the door through which people reached it.

The end of humanitarian parole

On March 25, 2025, the Federal Register, the federal government's official gazette, published the notice by which Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem terminated the parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, known as CHNV. According to the notice itself, about 532,000 people had been paroled through those programs between October 2022 and January 22, 2025. The programs were closed that day, and the parole of anyone in the country whose parole had not expired before April 24, 2025 would end on that date, absent an individual decision to the contrary. DHS announced that it would prioritize for removal those who had not previously filed an application for an immigration benefit, such as adjustment of status, and clarified that people who already held lawful status were not required to leave7.

For Cubans who had arrived with that parole, the difference between staying and being exposed depended on the calendar: someone who had already completed one year in the country could apply for permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act; someone who had not could lose parole before reaching that mark.

The termination was challenged in Boston. In April 2025, Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts certified a class of beneficiaries and stayed the termination insofar as it revoked paroles already granted. The government went to the Supreme Court, which on May 30, 2025 stayed that order while the appeal went forward. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote in dissent that the majority underestimated the consequences of allowing the government to "upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens" while their claims remained pending8. On September 12, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Gustavo Gelpí, vacated Talwani's stay and sent the case back to the district court9.

CBP One: termination by email

The second termination came by email. In April 2025, many of the people who had entered with a CBP One appointment received a message titled "Notice of Termination of Parole" that began: "It is time for you to leave the United States." It gave them seven days10.

A class action filed in August 2025 in Massachusetts by migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti and by a Venezuelan association succeeded on March 31, 2026. Judge Allison D. Burroughs certified a class of people who had requested an appointment through CBP One, were paroled between May 16, 2023 and January 19, 2025, lost that parole through the April 2025 email, and remained in the country; the plaintiffs estimated that it could cover more than 900,000 people. The judge vacated those terminations under the Administrative Procedure Act and ordered that class members be restored to the parole they held before the email10.

The effect lasted three weeks. By then DHS had a new head: after Noem's departure, the Senate confirmed Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin on March 23, 2026, by a vote of 54 to 45, and he was sworn in the next day11. To comply with the judgment, DHS drew up an initial list of about 613,000 people12. On April 21, 2026, the government told the court that the paroles had been reinstated and that, the same day, the CBP commissioner had signed a memorandum concluding that the purpose of those paroles had been fulfilled; individual termination notices would be sent on that basis13. On April 27 the judge denied an emergency stay of the new terminations and, on July 15, rejected the plaintiffs' motion to enforce her judgment, though she announced that she would require the government to notify class members and to document how it was undoing the consequences of the vacated terminations in their asylum and other immigration proceedings12.

The last family program

On December 15, 2025, DHS terminated the family reunification parole programs, among them the Cuban Family Reunification Parole (CFRP) Program, created in 2007 partly to meet the commitment in the migration accords with Cuba to allow the legal migration of at least 20,000 Cubans a year (see The Rafter Crisis). The notice put at about 1,060 the number of Cubans still in the United States on a valid parole from the original CFRP, not counting those who arrived under the version modernized in 2023, and at more than 15,000 the initial applications still pending under that program. That parole would end on January 14, 2026, except for anyone with a pending application for permanent residence (Form I-485) filed by December 15 at the latest, or who received a favorable individual decision from the Secretary14.

The travel ban and the hold on case files

On June 4, 2025, Trump signed Proclamation 10949, which from June 9 fully suspended the entry of nationals of twelve countries and partially suspended that of seven others, Cuba among them. The proclamation justified the measure by citing Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, its lack of law enforcement cooperation and the fact that the country "has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals." It suspended the entry of Cubans as immigrants and on tourist, business, student and exchange visas, kept as an exception the immigrant visas of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, and stated that it did not limit the right to seek asylum15. On December 16, 2025, Proclamation 10998 kept Cuba on the partial-restriction list, added countries and replaced the list of exceptions with one that no longer included immediate-relative visas. It took effect on January 1, 202616.

The proclamation governed entry into the country, but its country list came to be used inside it. On December 2, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued memorandum PM-602-0192, which with immediate effect placed on hold all asylum applications, of any nationality, and the benefit applications of people born in, or holding citizenship of, any of the nineteen countries in Proclamation 10949, "regardless of entry date." The first form on the list was the I-485, the application for permanent residence filed by those who rely on the Cuban Adjustment Act. The memorandum also ordered a new review, with possible interview, of benefits already approved to nationals of those countries who had arrived since January 20, 202117. On January 1, 2026, memorandum PM-602-0194 extended the hold to the countries in Proclamation 10998 and defined it: a case could be processed to the end, but not decided18.

On June 5, 2026, the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, John J. McConnell Jr., declared unlawful and vacated the four challenged policies: the benefits hold, the global asylum hold, the re-review of approved benefits and the review of "country-specific factors." The judgment describes, among those affected, clients and members of the plaintiff organizations from Cuba and other countries whose asylum, residence or work permit applications were stalled19. The government appealed to the First Circuit and asked for a stay of the judgment in the meantime; on July 15, 2026, Judge McConnell refused20.

The I-220A in the courts

No legal question has occupied the Cuban community that arrived in recent years as much as Form I-220A, the Order of Release on Recognizance that many of the Cubans who crossed the southern border during the 2021-2023 exodus received (see Parole and I-220A). The question is whether that release counts as parole for the Cuban Adjustment Act. On September 11, 2023, in Matter of Cabrera-Fernandez, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) answered that it does not: release on conditional parole under section 236(a)(2)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is "legally distinct" from humanitarian parole under section 212(d)(5)(A), and a person who receives it has not been "inspected and admitted or paroled"21. On June 20, 2025, in Matter of Roque-Izada, the BIA added that an immigration judge should not terminate removal proceedings so that a Cuban can seek adjustment before USCIS on the mere possibility that USCIS might later grant him parole22.

Meanwhile, the government changed its reading of the detention statutes, and that altered the discussion. On May 15, 2025, in Matter of Q. Li, the BIA decided that a person arrested without a warrant upon arrival in the country, at a port of entry or elsewhere, is detained under section 235(b) of the INA and cannot be released on bond, and that if the person is paroled and the parole is terminated, he returns to that custody23. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), citing press reports, on July 8, 2025 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued interim guidance that extended mandatory detention to all people present in the country without having been admitted24. On September 5, 2025, in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, the BIA confirmed that reading: immigration judges cannot grant bond to people who are in the country without having been admitted25. Under Cabrera-Fernandez, people released under section 236, the kind of release the I-220A documents, had been neither admitted nor paroled: they were, therefore, in that category. But the argument had another side, which the Cubans themselves raised before the courts: if they had been detained under section 235 from the start, their release must have been a parole26.

That tension reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, based in Atlanta and with jurisdiction over Florida. In two cases of Cuban families to whom the BIA had denied adjustment on the basis of Cabrera-Fernandez, the government changed its position in July 2025 and argued that the petitioners had been detained under section 235(a), although it continued to ask that their petitions be denied because they had merely benefited from a DHS error. On February 23, 2026, the court vacated the BIA's orders and sent the two cases back for four reasons: the government's change of position, the BIA's own new precedents on section 235, the split among the courts of appeals over which section governs these detentions, and the rejection of the government's new position by most district courts26. The ruling did not declare that the I-220A is a parole or grant residence to anyone, and it is marked "Not for publication," so it is not binding precedent. What it did was require the BIA to decide those two cases again in light of its own recent decisions.

The underlying question about detention reached the Supreme Court. On October 1, 2026, it agreed to review Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha (No. 26-104), which asks "[w]hether 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(A) mandates the detention pending removal proceedings of aliens who, like respondent, are present in the United States without having been admitted"27. The case does not concern the I-220A or the Cuban Adjustment Act, but the Supreme Court will interpret the same section on which much of that discussion depends.

Fees, benefits and public charge

On July 4, 2025, Trump signed the budget reconciliation law H.R. 1 (Public Law 119-21), which the House of Representatives had called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, although the enacted text does not carry that title. The law created new immigration fees. The fees for parole, asylum and work permits cannot be waived or reduced: $1,000 for each parole granted, $550 for the first work permit of a parolee or an asylum applicant, and $100 when applying for asylum plus another $100 for each year the application remains pending. Another fee, $1,500, applies to adjustment of status requested before an immigration court. The parole fee has ten exceptions, and the ninth exempts anyone with Cuban and Haitian entrant status as defined in section 501(e) of the Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980. The fee for adjustment before the court has no exception for Cubans28. The amounts are adjusted each year for inflation: the parole fee rose to $1,020 on January 1, 2026 and to $1,050 on October 16, 202629, and the fee for adjustment before the court reached $1,590 on October 1, 202630.

The same law rewrote who may receive food stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, Medicare and the health insurance tax credits. In the four new lists, only citizens, permanent residents, citizens of the Pacific Freely Associated States and Cuban and Haitian entrants appear; parolees, refugees and asylees are left out. For Medicaid, the change takes effect on October 1, 202628. The Cuban exception has its own history: the version passed by the House in May 2025 limited it to Cubans with an approved family petition who were in the country on a parole granted to fulfill the 1994 and 1995 migration accords, the profile of the family reunification program, and it was the final text that extended it to the whole category of Cuban and Haitian entrants31. The legal definition of that category includes Cuban nationals who entered on parole and have not acquired another status, those in removal proceedings without a final order and those with a pending asylum application32.

The other piece was public charge, the ground of inadmissibility that allows residence to be denied to a person considered likely to depend on government assistance. DHS proposed a new rule on November 19, 202533 and published it as final on July 20, 2026, signed by Secretary Markwayne Mullin, for adjustment applications filed from September 18, 2026. The rule removed sections 212.20 through 212.23 of title 8 of the Code of Federal Regulations from the federal regulations, including the list of exemptions that expressly mentioned people applying for adjustment under the Cuban Adjustment Act3435. In response to comments from those who feared for Cubans, DHS replied that, although it was removing that list, "the statutory exemptions created by Congress for certain Cuban and Haitian applicants for adjustment of status continue to exist"34. On September 14, 2026, twenty-two states and the District of Columbia sued DHS in New York to vacate the rule36.

Deportations to Cuba and to third countries

Direct deportations to Cuba remained few. According to the most recent annual report published by ICE, the one for 2024, removals of Cubans rose from 48 in fiscal year 2022 to 371 in 2023 and 657 in 2024; at the end of that year, 539,400 Cubans were on ICE's docket of non-detained cases37. The Cuban Ministry of the Interior, cited by EFE, reported that in 2025 the island received 1,669 migrants returned from the United States and other countries in the region; on February 9, 2026, a flight with 170 deportees landed in Havana38.

The novelty was deportation to third countries. According to an analysis by Human Rights Watch of ICE data, between January 20, 2025 and March 9, 2026 the United States deported more than 18,000 people to countries other than their own, nearly 13,000 of them to Mexico, and Cubans were the largest group: 4,353 sent to Mexico. Of them, 55 percent had a prior conviction in the United States, 16 percent had pending charges and 26 percent had no record39. The same organization identified in ICE data Cubans on removal flights to South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda in 2025 and to the Central African Republic in 2026, eleven in all on the flights it was able to cross-check40.

The island in the dark

The reasons to leave Cuba grew worse. The island suffered a nationwide blackout on September 10, 2025, the fifth in less than a year according to Al Jazeera41, and on October 29 Hurricane Melissa made landfall in the east of the country, near Chivirico, as a Category 3 storm42.

In January 2026 came the oil cutoff. A U.S. military operation overthrew Nicolás Maduro, who was taken to the United States on January 3, and Trump said that no more Venezuelan crude would go to Cuba4344. On January 29 he signed Executive Order 14380, which declared a national emergency and authorized tariffs on goods from any country that sold or supplied oil to Cuba; the text accused the Cuban government of destabilizing the region "through migration and violence"45. According to AP, Mexico's state oil company Pemex had sent the island nearly 20,000 barrels a day between January and September 202543. The tariff route lasted three weeks: on February 20 the Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs, and that same day Executive Order 14389 rescinded the additional duties provided for in Order 14380, though it kept the national emergency in place4647.

As of January 30, according to data from the firm Kpler cited by Al Jazeera, Cuba had oil for between fifteen and twenty days at the consumption rate of the time48. In March 2026 the national power grid collapsed several more times; President Miguel Díaz-Canel had said that the island had gone three months without receiving oil from foreign suppliers, and CBS News reported protests in the preceding days49. According to EFE, citing the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the total collapse of the electrical system on September 18, 2026 was the eighth of the year and left more than nine million people without power50.

Emigration shows in the population count. The National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) reported in July 2026 that Cuba ended 2025 with 9,434,593 inhabitants, 313,414 fewer than a year earlier, with 136,214 deaths against 68,064 births and a negative net migration of 245,264 people1. An independent demographer, Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, estimates a larger drop: he estimated that by the end of 2024 the population had already fallen to about 8 million, 24 percent less than at the end of 202051.

Pressure on Havana

Sanctions policy also hardened, and it carried two messages about migration. On June 30, 2025, Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 5 (NSPM-5), which reinstated the 2017 policy with changes, ordered a ban on transactions with the military conglomerate GAESA and left authorized remittances outside the ban. One of its directives looks to the past: "Not reinstate the 'Wet Foot, Dry Foot' policy," which the memorandum accuses of having encouraged thousands of Cubans to risk their lives (see Wet Foot, Dry Foot)52. On May 1, 2026, Executive Order 14404 expanded the January emergency with blocking sanctions against those who operate in the energy, defense, mining, financial services and security sectors of the Cuban economy53, and in June the State Department added Díaz-Canel himself to the sanctions list54. On September 30, 2026, rules of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took effect that also prohibit indirect transactions with entities on the restricted list and eliminate "people-to-people" group travel; the general license for family remittances was not changed55.

The numbers

The drop in arrivals was abrupt. Encounters of Cubans with CBP, which count both those who presented at a port of entry and those apprehended while crossing, fell from 217,615 in fiscal year 2024 to 33,056 in fiscal year 202556. Almost all of the 2025 encounters were recorded early in the fiscal year: 31,863 between October 2024 and January 2025, and since February 2025 fewer than 230 a month56. In fiscal year 2026, CBP announced, with preliminary data, the lowest total in its history for all nationalities, 379,243 encounters nationwide57; its data file records 1,865 encounters of Cubans in that year56. At sea, the Coast Guard repatriated 6,618 people to Cuba in fiscal year 2023, 749 in 2024 and 103 between October 2024 and May 20, 202558.

Indicator Fiscal year 2024 Fiscal year 2025
Encounters of Cubans with CBP56 217,615 33,056
Cubans who obtained permanent residence59 178,130 84,820
Of them, by adjustment of status in the United States59 155,630 72,430
Cubans naturalized59 32,920 38,920
ICE removals of Cubans37 657 no annual report published

Grants of residence to Cubans also fell within fiscal year 2025: about 62,600 between October 2024 and March 2025 and about 22,300 between April and September, according to the DHS quarterly tables, which round to the nearest ten59. In the United States, the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) estimated for 2025 a total of 3,082,802 people of Cuban origin and 1,799,047 born in Cuba, compared with 2,948,426 and 1,688,798 in 2024, with margins of error of between 38,000 and 56,000 people60.

The Cuban Adjustment Act in Congress

While everything around it changed, the Cuban Adjustment Act stayed the same. The online version of the United States Code published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (OLRC), current through Public Law 119-138 of November 3, 2026, reproduces it with its last amendment, from 2006, and with the 1996 clause under which it will be repealed only when the president determines that a democratically elected government is in power in Cuba6.

In the 119th Congress (2025-2026), four bills cite the Cuban Adjustment Act, a fifth affects its repeal clause, and none has progressed beyond introduction. The only one that repeals it is S. 4983, the Harry Reid Immigration Stabilization Act, introduced on July 15, 2026 by Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, whose section 202(a) provides that Public Law 89-732 "is repealed"; that same day it was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee61. In the opposite direction, the DIGNIDAD (Dignity) Act of 2025 (H.R. 4393), introduced on July 15, 2025 by Florida Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar, provides that, for purposes of the Cuban Adjustment Act, a person released by ICE on an order of release on recognizance on or before January 31, 2023 "shall be considered to have been paroled into the United States." It would address part of the I-220A problem by statute, though it does not name the form and leaves out those released after that date; it has been in a subcommittee since July 16, 202562. Two others, H.R. 6565 and S. 3419, introduced on December 10, 2025, would add the permanent partner alongside the spouse among the beneficiaries of the act63. The fifth, H.R. 7521 (the United States-Cuba Trade Act of 2026), introduced on February 12, 2026 by Massachusetts Democratic Representative James P. McGovern to lift the embargo, would repeal, among other provisions, section 606 of Public Law 104-208, the 1996 clause that ties the end of the Cuban Adjustment Act to the arrival of a democratically elected government in Cuba; that same day it was referred to several House committees64.

Where we stand today

Status as of November 11, 2026.

The Cuban Adjustment Act remains in force with the same text. The only bill introduced to repeal it has not progressed beyond referral to committee, and neither has the one that would treat some Cubans with an I-220A as paroled6162.

The parole routes that worked in 2023 and 2024 are closed: the CHNV program since March 2025 and the family reunification program since December 2025. The CBP One paroles that Judge Burroughs reinstated in March 2026 were terminated again with the CBP memorandum of April 21, and the litigation continues: on September 28, 2026, the judge issued a sanctions order requiring the government to give the plaintiffs' lawyers the list of class members and to identify those who suffered adverse consequences65.

Cuba remains on the partial-restriction list in Proclamation 1099816. The USCIS policies that froze the case files of nationals of those countries were vacated in June 2026; the government appealed, and USCIS indicates on both memoranda that they are no longer in effect "due to court orders"20.

Neither the BIA nor the Eleventh Circuit has declared that the I-220A is equivalent to parole. The official lists of BIA precedent decisions (volumes 29 and 30) record none that modifies Cabrera-Fernandez66; the two cases sent back by the Eleventh Circuit returned to the Board, and the Supreme Court has pending Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, on the scope of the section of the statute around which much of the discussion turns27.

The public charge rule has been in force since September 18, 2026, with DHS's statement that the exemption for those who apply for adjustment under the Cuban Adjustment Act remains in place, and with a lawsuit by twenty-two states pending in New York3436.

On the island, the official population fell by 313,414 people in 20251, and the electrical system had collapsed completely eight times in 2026 through September 18, according to EFE50. Across the strait, encounters of Cubans with CBP, which had been 217,615 in fiscal year 2024, fell to 33,056 in fiscal year 2025 and to 1,865 in fiscal year 202656.

Page updated November 11, 2026.

Notes and sources

  1. Thalía Fuentes Puebla, "Cuba cerró 2025 con 9 434 593 habitantes y mantiene tendencia al decrecimiento poblacional" [Cuba closed 2025 with 9,434,593 inhabitants and maintains a trend of population decline], Cubadebate, reproduced by the station CMHW, July 22, 2026, with data from the Oficina Nacional de Estadística e Información (ONEI). https://www.cmhw.cu/nacionales/cuba-cerro-2025-con-9-434-593-habitantes-y-mantiene-tendencia-al-decrecimiento-poblacional. See also EFE, "Cerca de 250.000 personas emigraron de Cuba en 2025, según cifras oficiales" [Nearly 250,000 people emigrated from Cuba in 2025, according to official figures], Swissinfo, July 21, 2026, https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/cerca-de-250.000-personas-emigraron-de-cuba-en-2025%2C-seg%C3%BAn-cifras-oficiales/91781384, and AFP, "Cuba's population slide continued in 2025 to 9.4 mn", Arab News, July 22, 2026, https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2651891/world back back back

  2. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "CBP Removes Scheduling Functionality in CBP One™ App", press release of January 21, 2025. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-removes-scheduling-functionality-cbp-one-app back

  3. Executive Order 14165, "Securing Our Borders", January 20, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 8467 (January 30, 2025), section 7, quoted verbatim in the CHNV termination notice, 90 Fed. Reg. 13611. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02015/securing-our-borders back

  4. Proclamation 10886, "Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States", January 20, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 8327 (January 29, 2025). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-01-29/pdf/2025-01948.pdf back

  5. Department of Homeland Security, "Designating Aliens for Expedited Removal", 90 Fed. Reg. 8139 (January 24, 2025). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-01-24/pdf/2025-01720.pdf back

  6. Public Law 89-732, 80 Stat. 1161 (November 2, 1966), as amended, and Public Law 104-208, div. C, section 606 (1996), in the notes to 8 U.S.C. § 1255, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, United States Code current through Public Law 119-138 (November 3, 2026), accessed November 11, 2026. https://uscode.house.gov/us/usc/t8/s1255/ back back

  7. Department of Homeland Security, "Termination of Parole Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans", 90 Fed. Reg. 13611 (March 25, 2025). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/25/2025-05128/termination-of-parole-processes-for-cubans-haitians-nicaraguans-and-venezuelans back

  8. U.S. Supreme Court, Noem v. Doe, No. 24A1079, order of May 30, 2025, with Justice Jackson dissenting. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a1079_p86b.pdf back

  9. U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Doe v. Noem, No. 25-1384, opinion of September 12, 2025. https://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/sites/ca1/files/opnfiles/25-1384P-01A.pdf back

  10. U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Doe v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-12245-ADB, Memorandum and Order (document 48), March 31, 2026. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.287744/gov.uscourts.mad.287744.48.0.pdf back back

  11. Kaia Hubbard and Kathryn Watson, "Markwayne Mullin sworn in as DHS secretary after Senate confirmation", CBS News, March 24, 2026, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/markwayne-mullin-confirmed-dhs-secretary-senate; The White House, "Secretary Markwayne Mullin Is Ready to Deliver on President Trump's Agenda", March 24, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/secretary-markwayne-mullin-is-ready-to-deliver-on-president-trumps-agenda/ back

  12. U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Doe v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-12245-ADB, Memorandum and Order (document 67), July 15, 2026. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.287744/gov.uscourts.mad.287744.67.0.pdf back back

  13. U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Doe v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-12245-ADB, Defendants' Status Update (document 56), April 21, 2026. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.287744/gov.uscourts.mad.287744.56.0.pdf back

  14. Department of Homeland Security, "Termination of Family Reunification Parole Processes for Colombians, Cubans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, Haitians, Hondurans, and Salvadorans", 90 Fed. Reg. 58032 (December 15, 2025). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/15/2025-22744/termination-of-family-reunification-parole-processes-for-colombians-cubans-ecuadorians-guatemalans back

  15. Proclamation 10949, "Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals To Protect the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats", June 4, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 24497 (June 10, 2025), sections 2, 3(b), 4(b), 6(d) and 8. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-06-10/pdf/2025-10669.pdf back

  16. Proclamation 10998, "Restricting and Limiting the Entry of Foreign Nationals To Protect the Security of the United States", December 16, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 59717 (December 19, 2025), sections 3, 6 and 10. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-12-19/pdf/2025-23570.pdf back back

  17. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, memorandum PM-602-0192, "Hold and Review of all Pending Asylum Applications and all USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from High-Risk Countries", December 2, 2025, copy published by AILA (doc. 25120361). https://assets.aila.org/files/fabb8870-5466-4dc2-ae58-3bf04e2cbf3b/25120362.pdf back

  18. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, memorandum PM-602-0194, "Hold and Review of USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from Additional High-Risk Countries", January 1, 2026, note 2, copy published by AILA (doc. 26010531). https://assets.aila.org/files/dbed5cde-2ec8-4119-b256-c76ce5067761/26010531.pdf back

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