Press Release

Washington, D.C. – The #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign decries the Trump administration’s decision to revoke legal status for people who had received humanitarian parole through the government’s “CHNV” program. With this decision, the Trump administration is stripping over 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela of their immigration status, revoking their work permits, and forcing them to return to countries where they may face grave danger. This is a cruel betrayal of the government’s promise to CHNV parole recipients and their U.S. sponsors. If the courts allow this decision to stand, it will lead to mass family separations, pain, and chaos in the communities that the program’s beneficiaries now call home. 

The termination of the CHNV program is one part of the Trump administration’s systematic attack on immigrant communities, those who support them, and the very notion of due process and rule of law in this country. As the Trump administration dismantles vital protections for people seeking safety, it is also seeking to cut people off from advocates that defend their rights and hold the government accountable to our laws and Constitution. On March 21, the Trump administration terminated a program providing legal services to children navigating the immigration court system alone, forcing children (including infants) to represent themselves in deportation proceedings. 

On March 22, the president issued a memo maligning immigration attorneys and directing federal officials to investigate those representing asylum seekers – a clear attempt to intimidate and silence attorneys protecting immigrants’ rights. Earlier this month, the Trump administration invoked a 1798 wartime authority to bypass due process and accelerate deportations of Venezuelan immigrants and refugees. The administration has since disappeared hundreds of Venezuelans, including people seeking asylum, to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, placing them at risk of torture and abuse while cutting them off from their lawyers. At the same time, the government has begun targeting immigrant students for their political speech, revoking their legal status, and disappearing them into ICE jails without explanation or due process.

Everyone is entitled to due process, regardless of where we come from, which tattoos we have, and what beliefs we hold. Everyone has the right to seek safety, and everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and fairness. We need to improve and expand pathways to safety and family reunification, like the CHNV process and the Unaccompanied Children Program – not destroy them. The Trump administration’s tactics are cruel and dangerous. They are eroding the rule of law and due process, foundational principles of this country’s legal system, and putting our communities at risk of grave rights violations. The #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign, which includes over 128 members across the country, remains committed to advocating for people seeking safety and defending our communities against these egregious attacks on their rights.

“Many Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans joined our communities after fleeing brutal repression and violence imposed by gangs or authoritarian governments.” said Danilo Zak, Director of Policy at Church World Service. “People impacted by today’s decision came here through a lawfully established program to seek protection through a legal pathway. They have helped local economies grow, they have paid taxes, they have embraced the spirit of their communities. This is nothing more than a betrayal of those who believed in the promise of America, and it undermines the future of all of us.”

“The Trump administration’s assault on the due process rights of immigrants and people seeking safety should alarm everyone,” said Kate Jastram, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS). “From immigrant children to humanitarian parole recipients, from Venezuelan asylum seekers to student activists, no one is safe from the Trump administration’s lawless mass deportation campaign. But our movement will not bow to the White House’s scare tactics. We will continue to vigorously defend the rights and safety of our refugee and immigrant neighbors.”

“Let’s be clear: this is a war on poor, Black and Brown people who dared to seek safety,” said Guerline Jozef, Executive Director of Haitian Bridge Alliance. “This is not policy—it is premeditated cruelty, rooted in white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and xenophobia. These families have followed the rules. Now they are being told they’re no longer welcome because Trump wants to rally his base with racist fear-mongering.”

“Revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of community members sets a dangerous precedent,” said Kristyn Peck, CEO of Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area. “This decision endangers Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who sought refuge in the United States, putting them at risk of removal. This action betrays the commitment our government made when it approved their humanitarian parole status while sending a chilling message to people who have come seeking refuge.”

“The Trump administration‘s unlawful intimidation tactics and evisceration of due process represent an egregious threat, not just to immigrant communities, but to the very foundation of the rule of law in this country,” said Hannah Flamm, Interim Senior Director of Policy at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). “Hundreds of thousands of people welcomed to the United States as parolees are having their status ripped from them while the administration weaponizes detention at Guantánamo Bay and a torturous mega-prison in El Salvador as threats. We decry and reject the administration’s various efforts to violate the rights of noncitizens and will continue to defend their humanity.”

“Once again we remind the Trump administration that programs like CHNV humanitarian parole are successful, effective, legal, and lifesaving and must therefore be protected and expanded. In another shameful move by the administration, we continue to turn our backs on people in need and shut the door on our most vulnerable neighbors and their families,” said Nili Sarit Yossinger, Executive Director at Refugee Congress. “Americans do not want these policies that separate families and deport neighbors who helped rebuild our communities. We want leaders who will take a stand to defend our collective values of welcome and safety, and who will protect our rights to due process against an administration committed to stripping those rights away.”

“For the last two years we have defended the CHNV parole program in court because we know that safe pathways to the United States save lives and enrich U.S. communities. Earlier this week, the Trump administration published a final notice that it will terminate the CHNV program and abruptly revoke the parole status and work authorization of the program’s beneficiaries who are lawfully in the United States. This cruel decision – which follows on the heels of the administration’s relentless attacks on people seeking safety — will upend the lives of thousands of vulnerable individuals, placing them in legal limbo. It will also harm the interests of American sponsors who have welcomed people into their homes, businesses and communities through the program. We condemn the Trump administration’s actions, which undermine our nation’s long history of exercising the parole authority to welcome newcomers in need,” said Talia Inlender, Deputy Director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law (CILP). 

“Ending the Unaccompanied Children’s Program is not just a policy shift—it is an abandonment of our most vulnerable children at their most desperate hour,” said Molly Chew, ReUnite Project Director at VECINA. “These are children who have fled unimaginable violence and trauma, only to be met with silence, fear, and isolation when they arrive here, ‘yearning to breathe free.’ This decision strips them of their right to legal support and safety, turning a system meant to protect into one that punishes, and putting children at risk of deportation to the very dangers they fled. It is cruel, dangerous, and will cost children’s lives.”

“Not only is this administration shutting down access to humanitarian protection at the border, they are also disrupting the only other way many people have to seek entry and protection in the United States,” said Azadeh Erfani, Policy Director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “Excluding Black and Brown people is this administration’s clear goal, in each case. There is no justification for the suffering this termination will inflict—or the blatant violation of binding law to bar protection for impacted individuals and families under this lifeline program.”

“No matter where we come from, and no matter what our immigration status is, we are all entitled to fairness, safety, and due process,” said Robyn Barnard, Senior Director, Refugee Advocacy at Human Rights First. “The Trump administration is abducting students for simply exercising their right to free speech; forcing children to fend for themselves in a court of law; and violating the protections that we have promised to people seeking safety. These attacks on people seeking safety – and those who support them – must be a rallying cry to all of us to redouble our commitment and resolve in the face of such cruelty.”

“Revoking the parole of people who came into the U.S. on the CHNV program is part of a broader strategy by the Trump administration to dismantle U.S. humanitarian protections (including asylum, refugee resettlement, and TPS) and to pressure people to leave before losing work authorization or being detained and potentially deported or transferred to a third country,”  said Yael Schacher, Director for the Americas and Europe for Refugees International. “These are our relatives, our neighbors, people who cannot return to countries in crisis. We remain committed to fighting back to protect our communities from these tremendously disruptive and cruel policies.” 

“As Jews, many of our families came to the U.S. searching for safety here,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. “Today, many of us are on the other side of those borders, and we will not let history repeat itself. We refuse to allow this administration to send our fellow human beings back to the dangers they fled. We will be loud in our insistence that every person is a creation in the image of the Divine and deserves safety and dignity. We urge the administration not to violate the fundamental rights of these community members.”

“We support vulnerable individuals affected by the administration’s decision to rescind legal status for those granted humanitarian parole. This may result in widespread family separations and suffering, a reality with which our Maya indigenous Nations are all too acquainted,” said Luis Marcos, Executive Director of Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim. “All individuals are entitled to due process; minors should neither navigate the legal system independently, nor should students be subjected to abduction for exercising their right to free expression, as the oppression of anyone’s due process rights results in the infringement of all our rights.”

“This administration has brazenly embarked on its quest to eliminate due process for all. We are witnessing an all out assault, whether it is children, alone in immigration custody, no longer afforded a lawyer; flying citizens of Venezuela to a maximum security prison in El Salvador because they have tattoos; stripping hundreds of thousands of people of their documentation, including students exercising free speech; or threatening the lawyers who dare defend the rights of people. We are witnessing a terror campaign against civil society, like those that have taken place in Central America and around the world under U.S.-backed dictators, and we cannot stay silent. Our voices in favor of due process, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are stronger together,” said Lariza Dugan Cuarda, Executive Director of the Central American Resource Center of Northern California – CARECEN SF. 

“The Trump administration has eviscerated the few remaining legal pathways for people seeking safety while rapidly deporting and forcibly disappearing people without due process to countries where they face torture and persecution,” said Sarah Mehta, senior border policy counsel at the ACLU. “The administration’s agenda was never about fixing our immigration system – instead, they are focused on a relentless campaign to break our human rights obligations and tear apart immigrant and mixed status families.”

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The #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign for asylum rights is composed of more than 125 organizations committed to transforming the way the United States receives and protects people forced to flee their homes to ensure they are treated humanely and fairly. To learn more about what we stand for, visit us online: https://wwdignity.org/solutions; to request an interview with an experts from the #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign, visit us here: welcomewithdignity.org