Explainer on Termination of Parole

By Yael Schacher | December 18, 2025

The explainer is updated in English as of December 18, 2025.

Access translations underway in English | Español | Kreyòl |русский | українська | پښتو | دری | Français | عربي

See individual translation pages for date of last update in each language.

The Trump administration opposes most uses of humanitarian parole and has terminated the parole of many people. If you entered the United States on parole, it is important that you speak to a legal service provider about your options.

Join our new WhatsApp Channel sharing critical information and updates for people with humanitarian parole and encourage your network to subscribe using this link.

1) DHS emailed termination notices to people who were paroled into the United States after presenting for a CBP One appointment at a land border port of entry and receiving a notice to appear in immigration court.

You can check the length of your parole on your I-94 form. The government may have changed the end-date of your parole by changing the date in that online system. You can check when your next scheduled court date is here. If your hearing date changes or is no longer listed, you should speak to a legal service provider.

If you want to pursue asylum or another form of relief in immigration court and have not yet submitted your application to the court, you should seek out legal support from an attorney. In July 2025, Congress and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (the office in charge of the immigration courts) imposed new fees on applications. Increasingly since the summer of 2025, immigration judges have been denying or “pretermitting” asylum applications without a full immigration hearing. There is more information on pretermissions below (7d).

2) If you are a person who arrived in the United States through the CHNV parole program through an airport, you may have received a notice that your parole and associated work authorization will be terminated on April 24, 2025. After the Supreme Court allowed the policy to go into effect while litigation challenging it in lower courts proceeds, DHS began sending notices of termination via email and myUSCIS accounts to CHNV parolees in June 2025. On September 12, 2025, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the administration’s termination of CHNV was likely legal though litigation is ongoing.

The administration has not terminated en masse the paroles of those who arrived through the United for Ukraine program or Operation Allies Welcome.

On December 15, 2025, DHS published a Federal Register notice terminating the family reunification parole processes that allowed certain family members from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras to come to the United States and wait for their family-based visas while on parole. If you were paroled through these programs, your grant of parole will be terminated on January 14, 2026 unless you filed an application to adjust status to permanent residency (form I-485) before December 15, 2025, in which case your parole remains valid until its individual expiration or USCIS makes a final decision on your Form I-485, whichever is sooner. If your parole has been affected by this notice, you can fill out this form to stay informed about a lawsuit that will be filed to contest the termination.

If you are a parolee waiting for a family-sponsored preference category visa to become available before you apply for adjustment of status, you will not have lawful status once your parole terminates (unless you have been granted another legal status) and will lose your eligibility to apply for lawful permanent residence. If you decide to leave the country, seek out legal advice regarding how to withdraw any applications you have submitted and future plans to apply for a visa abroad.

3) If you arrived through a parole program and have applied to USCIS for an immigration benefit, you may be able to continue to pursue that immigration relief.

In response to a lawsuit, in June 2025 USCIS authorized resumption of final adjudication of immigration applications (for work permits, re-parole, Temporary Protected Status, asylum, adjustment of status) filed by those who entered through humanitarian parole programs. On December 2, USCIS announced the suspension of processing of all applications for asylum. It also announced suspension of processing of all benefit applications submitted by people from travel banned countries, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela. A challenge to this suspension as it affects people who entered through parole programs may be made part of the same lawsuit. If you arrived through a parole program and receive information from USCIS that your immigration application has been paused or is on hold, or that an interview has been cancelled, please let litigators in the lawsuit know here.

Unless USCIS notifies you that your appointment is cancelled, you should assume the appointment will go forward. The pause does not suspend or extend any deadlines related to existing immigration applications or immigration benefits, so you should still meet all required deadlines.

Consult with an attorney if you are interested in submitting an application for asylum or another benefit to understand the fees you will have to pay and how your application will likely be handled by USCIS.

4) Beginning in late April 2025, DHS sent out by email notices of intent to revoke employment authorization in fifteen days to people who were paroled into the United States after presenting for a CBP One appointment and received a prior notice of termination of their parole. In August 2025, a federal court case was filed challenging the mass termination of parole and work authorization for people who received parole after their CBP One appointments at the border. This explainer will keep you updated on developments in this case.

5) If your parole has been terminated, you may no longer have a valid work permit or EAD. Employers using E-Verify access status change reports indicating employees whose EADs have been revoked. If you have a work permit on a basis other than parole, such as a pending asylum application, termination of your parole does not affect that work permit.

You should consult legal counsel and other resources below regarding applying for a work permit on another basis, including processing times and fees imposed for those EAD applications and time limits imposed on newly issued work permits.

There is also a resource below that answers questions about your rights and what to do if your work permit is no longer valid.

6) DHS has said in policy documents that it plans to place people whose parole has been terminated into expedited removal. This includes people who have an application pending in immigration court or with USCIS.

Being placed in expedited removal leads to detention and limits your opportunity to seek relief to a credible fear interview. USCIS officers have been authorized to place people in expedited removal and, beginning on October 6, 2025, to make arrests.

A federal judge has ruled that people who were paroled into the United States through airports or land border ports of entry cannot be placed in expedited removal. Litigation on this issue is ongoing. As it does, if you entered on parole, you should insist you cannot be placed in expedited removal.

If DHS tries to terminate your case in immigration court and subject you to expedited removal, you should oppose this by raising the decision in the Chirla v. Noem case. If you submitted an asylum application (Form I-589) to USCIS, and the asylum office tries to dismiss your application and says you must request that an ICE officer refer you for a credible fear interview or schedules you for a credible fear interview, send or have your attorney send a copy of the decision in Chirla v. Noem to the asylum office along with proof of your arrival at a port of entry and parole. If you are detained by ICE and subject to expedited removal, your attorney should send the same to your deportation officer and request that your expedited removal order be vacated. At the beginning of a credible fear interview, tell the asylum officer you should not be subject to expedited removal per the decision in the Chirla v. Noem case and that your order of placement in expedited removal be vacated.

7) People who arrived on parole could still be arrested and placed in detention and in full removal proceedings. So being well prepared is important. Below are steps to take and resources with further information:

a. Federal officers could detain you at your workplace or on the street, though court orders in Illinois and the District of Columbia require that officers have a warrant or probable cause to make an arrest. There is a resource below discussing copies of documents you can show officers regarding how long you have legally been in the country and that you have filed an application for asylum or another immigrant benefit.

b. To avoid attending immigration court in person, where ICE could arrest you or your attorney can request to have a virtual hearing via WebX.

c. If the ICE attorney tries to end your court proceedings, you or your attorney can oppose dismissal of the case by telling the judge if you have a fear of returning to your country and of your intention to attend immigration court hearings to pursue the relief for which you believe yourself eligible. If the judge nonetheless dismisses the proceedings, you or your attorney can appeal. There is a new fee for such an appeal and the appeal could likely be rejected.

d. If you submitted an asylum application to the court, an ICE attorney may ask an immigration judge to end hearings on your application. This is called “pretermission.” Recently judges have been pretermitting applications they deem incomplete or insufficient. To prevent this from happening in your case, you or your attorney may want to amend or clarify your submitted application and there are resources below that describe how to do that. Immigration judges have also been pre-termitting cases in response to motions by ICE attorneys that applicants are subject to an asylum cooperative agreement between the United States and another country (such as Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador or Uganda) and will be removed to that country. If you are scared to be transferred to the designated third country (or countries), you should tell the judge. If the judge grants you a chance to respond to a motion to pretermit, you must do so within ten days and it is best to seek out the help of an attorney.

e. Regardless of what the judge does in immigration court, ICE could detain you. DHS officers could also detain you at an immigration check in with ICE or a USCIS appointment or at the asylum office when you appear for an interview. If you have a lawyer, you should make sure to sign all the forms required for their representation of you should you be detained by ICE and should you be given a credible fear interview by USCIS. You should discuss the expedited removal process, including what happens during a credible fear interview and the possibility of removal to a third country. You should also discuss a plan with your family in case you are detained.

f. If ICE arrests you, you should tell officers immediately if you have a fear of return to harm, persecution or torture in your country of origin and any third country and request insistently for a fear interview and a chance to seek asylum or protection under the Convention against Torture. Since DHS is removing people to both home and third countries, it is important that you articulate fear and request protection from removal to all possible countries.

8) The Trump administration announced the ending of TPS affecting parolees from Venezuela, Haiti, Afghanistan, and other countries, though these are being challenged in court.

On July 21, 2025, the appeals court in Virginia allowed the Trump administration to terminate Afghanistan TPS. The fight against this termination continues in the lower court.

A federal court judge in New York ruled that TPS for Haiti remains in effect through February 3, 2026. On November 28, 2025, the Trump administration published a notice justifying the termination, which is being challenged in court.

TPS for Venezuela under both the 2021 and 2023 designations has ended. There are two exceptions. If you applied to re-register and received an approval notice or work permit based on TPS between January 17 and February 5, 2025, your TPS remains valid until October 2, 2026. If you applied to renew your work permit based on TPS and you received a receipt notice with the automatic extension between January 17 and February 5, 2025, your work permit is extended until April 2, 2026. But you lack protected status so could still be subject to detention or deportation.

9) If you decide to leave the country, seek out legal advice regarding how to end your court proceedings and withdraw any applications you have submitted. Even if you use the CBP Home app to tell DHS that you are leaving, you are at risk of receiving a deportation order from immigration court in your absence after you have left that will bar you from returning to the United States. Leaving the country will mean immigration applications you have submitted will be considered abandoned, which will make it harder for you to gain future immigration benefits. There are resources below that explain what we know about how CBP Home works and the difficulty of returning to the United States legally after self deportation.

Further Resources

How to Find Legal Service Providers:

Information for People who got Parole After a CBP One Appointment at the Border:

IRAP Important Information for People Who Got Parole Using CBP One

Explainer on Asylum and TPS:

Explainers on Work Permits:

Litigation Affecting People who Arrived on Parole Programs:

JAC Svitlana Doe v. Noem — Humanitarian Parole Class Action

Litigation on Parole and Expedited Removal:

Explainers on Expedited Removal:

Information on Removal to Third Countries:

NILA Practice Alert: Third Country Deportations and D.V.D. v. DHS

Information About Self-Deportation and CBP Home:

Safety Measures and Plans for Asylum Seekers and Parolees:

What to do When Arrested or Detained:

Requesting that Immigration Judge Change Hearing From In-person to Virtual via WebEx:

NIPNLG Pro Se Guide for Motion to Change Hearing to WebEx

Response to Motion to Dismiss in Immigration Court Proceeding:

What to do if an Immigration Judge Tries to “Pretermit” Your Case Without a Hearing, Including Because of an Asylum Cooperative Agreement:

How to Amend an Asylum Application:

Human Rights First I-589 Amendments Filing