Statement for the Record on Humanitarian Parole
Statement for the Record by Refugees International
“Case-by-Case: Returning Parole to its Proper Purpose” Joint Hearing of House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittees on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability and on Border Security and Enforcement
Refugees International is an independent, non-profit organization that advocates for lifesaving assistance, human rights, and protection for forcibly displaced people around the world. Refugees International Director for the Americas and Europe, Dr. Yael Schacher has written extensively on the history of parole authority and of parole programs.1
This history shows that parole has been used extensively by Democratic and Republican administrations. Both before and after Congress passed the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, immigration agencies vetted each individual who came through parole programs – including Cubans paroled in the 1960s and people from Vietnam in the 1980s and 1990s. Programs allow certain populations to access assessment for parole, but individuals are still assessed case-by-case. The Trump administration acknowledges this reality—pointing to the great amount of work done by CBP officers to vet each person who arrived at U.S. airports through the CHNV program. But, at the same time, it has terminated CHNV parole en-masse and begun to expeditiously remove people who came here legally through ports of entry and have ongoing immigration proceedings and applications pending.
Indeed, the Trump administration is turning parole policy on its head. Parole is intended to facilitate the entrance of foreign nationals for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit – while the Trump administration’s mass termination of parole is inhumane and detrimental to U.S. interests, sowing chaos across U.S. communities and disruption to critical industries that power the American economy.
Like past parole programs, the CHNV program required a sponsor to initiate an application and financially support the parolee. Current parolees have also applied for and received work authorization, are supporting themselves, and contributing to the strength of the U.S. economy. A Summer 2024 Refugees International survey of over 420 adults paroled into the United States through the CHNV program found that more than 95 percent of them were working, most prominently in the service and caregiving sectors but also significantly in construction and manufacturing. Terminating the parole of everyone in the CHNV program means termination of their associated work authorization as well, leaving employers emptyhanded. The survey also found that a large majority of sponsors of parolees were U.S. citizens or permanent residents, with a majority being relatives. Revoking parole will rip U.S. families apart.2 It is also inhumane to ask Haitian CHNV parolees—a majority of whom have outstanding applications for TPS and asylum that USCIS stopped processing under this administration—to return to a country much more insecure than when they left.3
The published testimony by the witnesses at today’s hearing are full of unfounded attacks against people who have come into the United States on parole. The testimony about the fiscal impact of parolees is speculative because data on their educational attainment is unavailable. The testimony also concedes that recent arrivals from Haiti, the nationality group that most benefited from the CHNV program, do not use welfare in larger numbers than those born in the United States. What we do know definitively, as several labor unions described in a brief about CHNV to the Supreme Court, is that abrupt termination of parolees’ work authorization will disrupt production across several industries and harm American workers with ”punishing work conditions including excessive mandatory overtime…[or] layoffs [by] employers no longer able to meet consumer demand as a result of a sudden reduction in staffing.”4 Another witness today is a former security official who claims – without any evidence, indeed even citing inspector general findings that do not exist – that people who arrive through parole programs are a threat to United States national security. Former security officials Refugees International interviewed assert the opposite.5 The testimony also casts aspersions on Afghan allies, the vetting of whom was recently found by the Justice Department inspector general to have been thoroughly sound.6
In a memo on January 20, 2025, acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman wrote that parole should never be used to facilitate the entrance of people with prima facie asylum claims. But that is exactly how it has, historically, been used to evacuate allies—this was true in 1996 when the United States evacuated Iraqi Kurds and paroled them to Guam to seek asylum, and it was true when the United States evacuated Afghans from Kabul in 2021 and paroled them in at Dulles airport so that they could seek asylum in the United States. Since 1980, parole has also been frequently used as a pathway to safety alongside refugee resettlement, whether it be for Cambodians in 1985, for people from the former Soviet Union in 2001, or for Central American minors in 2016.
At a time of unprecedented forced displacement because of both sudden and protracted conflicts and environmental disasters, it is all the more important for Congress to maintain – rather than limit – a flexible parole authority to help manage migration and facilitate the entry of people for humanitarian reasons.
Endnotes
[1] Yael Schacher, “Supplementary Protection Pathways to the United States: Lessons from the Past for Today’s Humanitarian Parole Policies,” Refugees International, November 2022
https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs/supplementary-protection-pathways-to-the-united-states-lessons-from-the-past-for-todays-humanitarian-parole-policies/
Yael Schacher, expert declaration on the history of parole, June 2023, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66754800/175/76/state-of-texas-v-us-department-of-homeland-security/
Yael Schacher, amicus brief on the history of parole, October 2023, https://d3jwam0i5codb7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/177116362608.pdf
[2] Yael Schacher, “Setting the Record Straight on CHNV,” Refugees International, March 28, 2025, https://www.refugeesinternational.org/perspectives-and-commentaries/setting-the-record-straight-on-chnv
[3] Parolee Immigrant Benefit Tracking, Exhibit 3 in Plaintiff’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgement, June 16, 2025, Doe et al. v. Noem et al., 1:25-cv-10495-IT (D. Mass.) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zzHUWVOGa7Z04orBguee3yLYHliep7nR/view
[4] Amicus Brief of the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions SEIU, UFCW, UAW, UNITE HERE, IUPAT, IUE-CWA, and BAC, May 16, 2025, Noem v. Doe, https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A1079/358963/20250516121003835_CHNV%20Brief%20FINAL.pdf
[5] “Guerven’s Story,” Refugees International, July 7, 2025
https://www.refugeesinternational.org/perspectives-and-commentaries/let-them-stay-guervens-story/
[6] “Audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Participation in the Handling of Afghan Evacuees During Operation Allies Refuge and Operation Allies Welcome,” June 10, 2025, https://oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-releases-report-federal-bureau-investigations-participation-handling-afghan-evacuees