Press Release: 7/3/2025

AG Campbell Leads Multi-State Effort Urging Courts To Preserve Humanitarian Parole For Over Half A Million Immigrants From Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, And Venezuela

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

7/02/2025

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Kennedy Sims, Deputy Press Secretary

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Call Kennedy Sims, Deputy Press Secretary at (617) 727-2543

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Email Kennedy Sims, Deputy Press Secretary at Kennedy.Sims@mass.gov

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell today co-led a coalition of 17 other state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Doe v. Noem, urging the Court to uphold the lower court’s decision and recognize the lawful CHNV parole program. The program allows over 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan immigrants, who fled dangerous conditions in their home countries, to maintain legal status in the United States.

“The Trump Administration’s termination of humanitarian parole is a prime example of this Administration’s abuse of power and mistreatment of immigrants,” said AG Campbell. “Massachusetts is home to the third largest Haitian population in the country. CHNV parole recipients care for our most vulnerable residents, fill essential jobs, and contribute to our local economies. Ending the CHNV parole program is causing irreparable harm—not only to these individuals and their families, but to Massachusetts as a whole. We will continue to fight to protect our Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan community members working essential jobs and starting businesses that support our economy.”

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the CHNV parole program in 2022 and 2023 for immigrants fleeing violence and unbearable conditions in their home countries, specifically Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The program provides parole recipients with the opportunity to live and work legally in the United States on a two-year basis for urgent humanitarian reasons. Shortly after taking office, President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the DHS Secretary to terminate the CHNV parole program and other Biden-Harris era humanitarian parole pathways, abruptly upending the lives of over half a million lawfully present immigrants across the country.   

The district court entered a preliminary injunction against DHS’s termination of CHNV parole, explaining that DHS unlawfully revoked their parole status en masse based on flawed legal reasoning. The court maintained that abruptly upending the CHNV parole program would cause irreparable harm and leave over 500,000 immigrants suddenly without legal status, unable to work, and without means to provide for themselves and their families. The Supreme Court stayed the preliminary injunction, as the case continues on appeal in the First Circuit.

In the brief, the coalition defends the district court’s decision, emphasizing that the unlawful termination of CHNV parole en masse would separate families, endanger recipients, disrupt economies, worsen existing labor shortages, and threaten public safety. Immigrants contribute over $651 billion in taxes nationally, including $6.6 billion in Massachusetts and in 2023, held $51.8 billion in spending power. Across the Commonwealth, immigrants make up 21.9% of the state’s labor force and 38.6% of health aides, often filling critical work vacancies within key sectors of the state labor force, including 800–1,000 CHNV parolees serving as caregivers in short-staffed nursing facilities and roles in special education schools. 

Joining AG Campbell in submitting this brief, which she co-led with the attorneys general of New York and Illinois, are the attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.