Federal Judge Orders Trump Administration to Restore Status of 900,000 CBP One Migrants

For 900,000 people who built lives in the United States after entering through a Biden-era immigration program, a single federal ruling reversed the legal whiplash of the past year. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts vacated the Trump administration's decision to end the immigration parole status of migrants who entered through the Biden-era CBP One policy, finding that the move violated procedures outlined in law.

The ruling, issued March 31 in a 25-page memorandum and order, reinstates two-year terms of humanitarian parole for those who entered through CBP One appointments between May 16, 2023 and January 19, 2025. That status protects recipients from deportation and allows them to legally work and remain in the country. By year-end 2024, approximately 936,500 people had entered with CBP One appointments at border crossings with Mexico.

The disruption traces to January 20, 2025, when President Donald Trump shut down the CBP One app as one of his first acts in office, immediately canceling roughly 30,000 pending appointments. The Biden administration had launched the app in 2023 under then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, requiring asylum seekers to schedule appointments at legal ports of entry rather than crossing illegally. The Trump administration argued the program violated U.S. immigration law by bypassing the traditional immigration system.

The legal crisis escalated in April 2025, when DHS sent mass emails to more than 900,000 CBP One users stating: "It is time for you to leave the United States." The emails gave recipients seven days to depart and warned that "the federal government will find you" if they did not comply. The messages were not addressed to any specific recipient and were not signed by any government official. By the time Judge Burroughs issued her ruling, tens of thousands of migrants had already left or been deported.

Judge Burroughs, an Obama appointee who in 2017 imposed an injunction against Trump's first travel ban, wrote that "the regulations do not give the agency unfettered discretion to terminate parole" and that the parole terminations "exceeded the agency's statutory authority and contradicted the procedures set forth in its own regulations." Before revoking parole, she held, the agency must first conclude that "parole's humanitarian or public-benefit purposes have been served."

The ruling does not permanently bar DHS from revoking parole; the agency retains that authority but must follow proper legal procedures going forward.

The class-action lawsuit was filed in August 2025 by Democracy Forward and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute on behalf of a Haitian woman living in Massachusetts, a Cuban woman in Texas, a Venezuelan woman in Ohio, and the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts. Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, called the ruling "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." Georgia Katsoulomitis, executive director of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said DHS "stripped our immigrant families, neighbors, and workers of their parole status, causing immense fear, instability, and disruption to our society."

DHS called the decision "blatant judicial activism undermining the President's Article II authority to determine who remains in this country" and defended the original mass cancellations as "a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect our national security." For the hundreds of thousands who remained in the country when the ruling landed, the order restored legal standing that had been stripped by a form email. DHS retains the underlying authority to revoke parole through proper legal procedure, leaving the final resolution for many of those 900,000 migrants still unresolved.