President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security wasted no time dismantling yet another relic of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies. In a swift and decisive move, DHS announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) now has the authority to deport foreign nationals who were admitted under Biden’s parole programs. A newly released memo made it clear that migrants who were granted parole under policies that may be “paused, modified, or terminated” could soon find themselves on the fast track to removal. For conservatives, this is a long-overdue correction to what they see as a blatant abuse of executive authority that allowed hundreds of thousands to enter the country with little oversight.
Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman laid out the administration’s plan to empower ICE to revoke the legal status of approximately 1.4 million migrants admitted under two particularly controversial Biden-era programs: the CBP One app and the CHNV program. The CBP One app, which essentially functioned as an express lane for migrants to schedule asylum claims at U.S. ports of entry, allowed 1,450 individuals per day to bypass traditional vetting processes. In a move that surprised no one paying attention to Trump’s immigration priorities, his administration shut down the app on Inauguration Day, canceling any outstanding appointments and putting an abrupt end to what many critics viewed as a digital loophole for illegal immigration.
The numbers from these programs are staggering. Since its launch in January 2023, the CBP One app funneled more than 919,000 migrants into the country with little resistance. Meanwhile, the CHNV program, another Biden-era brainchild, allowed 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the U.S. under temporary legal status for two years. By the time Trump took office, this program had admitted over 530,000 foreign nationals—many of whom were granted permission to stay with little to no scrutiny. While the Biden administration pitched these initiatives as humanitarian efforts, Trump’s DHS has been blunt in labeling them reckless and irresponsible.
A DHS spokesperson didn’t hold back, accusing the previous administration of abusing the humanitarian parole program to indiscriminately flood the country with migrants. The spokesperson stated that Biden’s policies amounted to a backdoor amnesty program that ignored national security concerns and overwhelmed border enforcement resources. By halting these programs on his first day back in office, Trump sent a clear message that immigration policies would once again prioritize national interests over ideological open-border fantasies. The newly issued directive also instructed ICE to carefully review each case individually and determine whether migrants should face expedited removal or other legal proceedings.
The memo laid out clear guidance on how ICE should proceed, emphasizing that each parole case must be reassessed based on changing legal and factual circumstances. Huffman reiterated that this shift aligns with the administration’s broader strategy, as outlined in the January 21 notice titled “Designating Aliens for Expedited Removal.” This directive expands the use of expedited deportation to the full extent allowed by law, enabling the government to remove migrants who have been in the U.S. for less than two years without drawn-out immigration hearings. For Trump supporters, this marks a long-overdue correction to years of unchecked migration, while critics are already gearing up for another round of political theater as they try to paint basic immigration enforcement as a crisis of human rights.
