The Trump administration has put into action a plan to order 500,000 foreign nationals to self-deport from America immediately.
Those who play ball with the Department of Homeland Security will receive a cash bonus of $1,000 when they return to their home country.
The immigrants, from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, had previously been granted “humanitarian parole” into the U.S under a scheme launched under the Biden administration in 2023. Dubbed the CHNV program, it aimed to protect people from the extreme living conditions in those four countries (which give the program its acronym).
The DHS calculated that as of November last year, 531,670 people had been granted permission to stay in the U.S under the program.
The DHS began sending documents out on Thursday, two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled the administration could force those in the CHNV program to leave the country. A legal challenge against Trump’s dismantling of Biden-era parole programs is still ongoing.
In April Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “Can you believe it? A Judge ruled against us on 530,000 Illegal Migrants (that Joe Biden flew over the Border in his program to transport Illegals into the Country by airplane) saying that they can’t be looked at as a group, but that each case has to be tried individually.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed those in the CHNV program had not been correctly screened by the Biden administration. She also said immigrants granted parole were undercutting American workers.
“Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” McLaughlin said in a statement.
However the head of the nonprofit Global Refuge, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, said the immigrants the DHS were planning to deport had already passed security screenings and were authorized to work.
“Instead of rewarding responsible migration through orderly legal pathways,” she said Trump’s action “punishes those who jumped through every hoop asked of them.”
On Thursday, the day documents began being sent to those in the CHNV program, Trump posted on Truth Social that farmers and people in the hotel and leisure industries said the “aggressive policy on immigration” was robbing them of long-term workers.
“In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs,” Trump wrote.
“This is no good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA,” he wrote. “Changes are coming!”
