Judge voids DHS parole revocation for 900,000 CBP One migrants

U.S. District JAJudge Allison Burroughs issued a ruling on April 1, 2026, finding that the Department of Homeland Security violated federal law when it revoked parole for approximately 900,000 migrants who had entered the United States through the CBP One mobile app program. Judge Burroughs was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama in 2014 and sits in the District of 🏛️Massachusetts in Boston. Her ruling is a memorandum and order, not a preliminary injunction — she reached a final legal conclusion that DHS acted unlawfully.

The court's order vacated the parole terminations and directed federal officials to restore parole status and work authorization for all members of the affected class. The ruling took immediate legal effect, meaning the migrants' status was restored upon issuance of the order rather than after an appeal period.

The CBP One mobile application was configured by the Biden administration from May 2023 to January 2025 to allow migrants outside the United States to schedule appointments at land ports of entry along the southern border. Migrants who used the app, arrived at a port of entry, and passed inspection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were granted humanitarian parole under Section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Parole allowed migrants to enter the country legally, receive work authorization, and pursue asylum claims while remaining in the United States. Approximately 900,000 people — primarily from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other Central and South American nations — entered through the program between its launch in May 2023 and the Trump administration's shutdown of CBP One appointments on January 20, 2025. Many are employed across construction, hospitality, and agricultural sectors.

The Trump administration revoked CBP One paroles in April 2025 through a mass email sent to affected migrants, informing them their parole had been terminated and instructing them to leave the United States. The administration did not provide individualized review, individual notice, or a case-by-case assessment of each migrant's circumstances before terminating their legal status and work authorization.

The mass termination was implemented under a DHS directive rather than through notice-and-comment rulemaking. Migrants who had been legally present in the United States for months or years, many of whom had established jobs, housing, and community ties, received notification that their status was void without any opportunity to be heard or to present evidence of their individual circumstances.

Judge Burroughs' legal reasoning rested on two related grounds: the statute and the agency's own regulations. She found that Section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act requires individualized review before parole can be revoked — the DHS action 'was not in accordance with law' because it terminated status without the process the statute mandates. She also found that DHS violated its own regulatory procedures, which require case-by-case determination before parole revocation.

The Administrative Procedure Act provides courts the authority to vacate agency actions that are 'arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.' Burroughs applied this standard and found the mass termination met the threshold for court intervention. Her ruling quotes DHS's own regulations to show the agency departed from its own established process.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, confirmed by the Senate 54-45 in March 2026, issued a statement calling the ruling 'blatant judicial activism that undermines the President's Article II authority to determine who remains in this country.' The Trump administration has challenged virtually every major court ruling that has blocked its immigration enforcement agenda, viewing federal court intervention in executive immigration decisions as constitutional overreach.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is the likely next venue for the administration's challenge. The government may also seek a stay of Judge Burroughs' order pending appeal, which would temporarily suspend the ruling's effect while the appeal is decided. In similar immigration cases, courts have had to weigh the harms to affected migrants against the administration's interest in enforcing its immigration policy.

The immediate practical effect of the ruling was to restore parole status and work authorization for the roughly 900,000 class members. Many had faced job loss, inability to renew leases, and risk of detention and deportation after receiving the April 2025 termination notice. Workers in construction, hospitality, and agriculture who had been legally employed were among the most directly affected.

SPSkye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, said: 'Today's ruling is a clear rejection of an administration that has tried to erase lawful status for hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button.' The 🏛️Massachusetts Law Reform Institute co-represented the plaintiffs, including three individual women from Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti, and the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, an advocacy organization.

The CBP One parole litigation is distinct from earlier cases involving the CHNV programs — separate Biden-era parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans that used a different application process. Earlier litigation in that track reached the Supreme Court, where Justice Indira Talwani and later the First Circuit addressed parole terminations for CHNV program participants. Judge Burroughs' ruling applies specifically to the approximately 900,000 CBP One app migrants.

The ruling is part of a broader pattern of federal court intervention in Trump administration immigration enforcement actions. More than 100 federal judges across the country have issued orders limiting or blocking various aspects of the administration's immigration agenda, including deportations, parole terminations, and visa revocations. The administration has challenged many of these rulings as violations of executive authority over immigration.

Federal courts have long recognized Congress's plenary power over immigration law, but they have also enforced procedural requirements when agencies act outside their own rules. The Supreme Court addressed the scope of the parole revocation authority in earlier cases involving the CHNV programs, and the administration's use of reconciliation and appropriations legislation to restrict judicial review of immigration enforcement is ongoing.

The immigration parole authority under Section 212(d)(5) has historically been used for individual cases and humanitarian emergencies, not mass categorical programs. The Center for Immigration Studies and the House Homeland Security Committee, in an August 2023 oversight report, argued the scale of CBP One represented an unprecedented expansion of executive parole authority beyond congressional intent — using a tool designed for individual humanitarian emergencies to categorically process nearly a million people. The American Immigration Council and the American Civil Liberties Union argued CBP One was a lawful exercise of longstanding discretionary parole authority that created an orderly legal entry pathway and, according to CBP data, measurably reduced illegal border crossings at ports where appointments were available.