Indian-American federal judge to block Trump admin from ending humanitarian parole, cites ‘incorrect reading of law’

Amid the Trump administration’s mass deportations and large-scale visa revocations for international students, a federal judge has announced that she will block the POTUS from revoking the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in the US.

Indian-American federal judge Indira Talwani said the US Department of Homeland Security’s decision to cut short the two-year parole granted to the migrants under President Joe Biden’s administration was based on an “incorrect reading of the law”, Reuters reported.

What was the ‘incorrect reading’?

Indira Talwani said the Trump administration wanted to expose about 450,000 people to expedited deportation effective April 24 based on a wrong interpretation of the statute governing the process.

Talwani elaborated that the law in question is meant to apply to people who illegally cross the border, so they can be removed quickly. However, Donald Trump's administration is using it against people who had entered the US legally — with official permission through a process called “parole”.

“What you're prioritizing is not people coming over the border but the people who followed the rules,” Reuters quoted the Indian American judge as saying.

Trump admin cracks down on parole

In March 2025, the Trump administration revoked legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, setting them up for potential deportation in 30 days. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24.

On Wednesday, April 9, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also terminated parole protections for people who entered US through the Biden era's CBS One app. Roughly 985,000 people used the app to make appointments at a port of entry at the border, reported The Hill.

Joe Biden's parole entry

In 2022, Joe Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those countries.

Indian-American federal judge Indira Talwani

Indira Talwani was appointed during former US President Barack Obama's tenure.

Talwani was even labelled as ‘Obama judge' by MAGA activists when she heard the initial habeas corpus petition following Tufts University graduate Rümeysa Öztürk's detention and ordered that she not be moved out of Massachusetts.