Trump terminates Biden parole program
March 24, 2025
The U.S. Trump administration will terminate the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela who are in the U.S. under a two-year parole program created by the previous administration, which grants them protection from deportation and permits them to legally work.
The move, announced over the weekend, gives CHNV program immigrants a month to self-deport or face arrest and removal by deportation agents. A total of 532,000 people entered the U.S. under that policy, which was paused this year after Donald Trump took office, reports CBS.
It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status, notes the Guardian. Some experts say the vast majority of CHNV parolees will be subject to removal, reports AFP.
Maduro receives deportation flights again
Venezuela’s government started receiving deportation flights from the U.S. again over the weekend. Nicolás Maduro’s government was under intense pressure from the Trump administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that Venezuela would face new, “severe and escalating” sanctions if it refused to accept its repatriated citizens, reports the New York Times.
Venezuela’s decision also follows the U.S. Trump administration’s deportation of 238 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they have been imprisoned in a maximum security prison by Nayib Bukele’s government, a move that has been legally challenged and criticized by rights advocates. (Reuters)
Venezuela accepted the deal to guarantee the “the return of our compatriots to their nation with the safeguard of their Human Rights,” said Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s Assembly and Maduro’s chief negotiator with the U.S. (Associated Press)
It is increasingly clear that most of the people deported to El Salvador by the U.S. were not accorded due process. U.S. authorities have acknowledged that not all of them are members of the aforementioned gang and that some do not even have a criminal record in the United States, reports El País.
Many of those prisoners have been detained under emergency procedures that human rights groups say bypass due process and amount to arbitrary arrest. The Financial Times reports some had signed documents agreeing to be returned to their home country, but wound up in El Salvador instead.
And the Trump administration’s claims that they are affiliated with criminal groups is tenuous at best. Adam Isacson presents profiles of 15 of the deportees, compiled from news reports and court documents linked from each. None shows evidence of criminal ties, and ICE seems to have detained many of them based on tattoos, which do not even appear to be a consistent signifier of Tren de Aragua membership. (Border Update. ) The Immigration Lab Blog has the story of one Venezuelan man deported due to a tattoo he got years ago. (See last Friday’s post.)
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Venezuelans are particularly vulnerable in the U.S. because they do not have consular assistance, as Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic ties in 2018. “Many question whether Washington would have dared to stage the collective expulsion of Mexicans — the largest community of potential deportees — in the same way,” notes El País.
Migration
If the U.S. hopes to stem migration from Venezuela, it should not maintain exceptions to oil sanctions that prop up the Maduro government, argue Dany Bahar and Ricardo Hausmann in Americas Quarterly. “In our view, low expectations of regime change are the central driver of the Venezuelan exodus. Paradoxically, given this hopelessness, temporary economic improvements from higher oil revenues make it more affordable for desperate Venezuelans to finance their journey north and leave.”
A group of third-country deportees sent by the U.S. to Panama — initially locked in a hotel, then sent to a jungle camp — is now stranded in a country that doesn’t want them. Many of the remaining migrants — from Iran, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere — are sleeping in a school gymnasium made available by an aid group, with no real sense of what to do next, reports the New York Times.
Costa Rica’s agreement to receive 200 third-country deportees from the US was made informally, without a signed agreement, reports the Americas Migration Brief. The verbal agreement allowed for a maximum of 200 third-country nationals to be sent to Costa Rica, with the U.S. covering their maintenance, repatriation costs, and assistance in relocating them to safe third countries if needed, according to Foreign Minister Arnoldo André. (Tico Times)
US and Costa Rican authorities have claimed that all third-country nationals deported to Costa Rica want to return to their home countries. But five of them told Human Rights Watch that they and others consistently told US and Costa Rican officials that they had fled persecution and were seeking asylum.
At least 1,233 migrants died in 2024 on migration routes in the Americas, according to new IOM data. “IOM believes that ‘the true number of migrant deaths and disappearances is likely much higher, as many have not been recorded,’” notes La Tercera. (Via Americas Migration Brief)
Haiti
A year into the criminal insurrection that has taken Haiti’s capital hostage, experts speculate Port-au-Prince “may be on the verge of falling into the hands of a coalition of heavily armed gangs called Viv Ansanm (Live Together),” reports the Guardian.
Colombia
La Silla Vacía reports on the thousands people displaced from Catatumbo by ELN violence, two months ago, many in Cúcuta now.
Brazil
A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court will open proceedings tomorrow to decide whether former President Jair Bolsonaro and several of his associates will stand trial on five counts, including attempting to stage a coup d’etat, reports the Associated Press.
“…The Amazon increasingly occupies the popular imagination as both the emblematic victim of human-driven environmental destruction and a source of salvation where alternatives and solutions may be found. The newly released book The Amazon in Times of War by academic, filmmaker, and journalist Marcos Colón investigates these visions of the Amazon and the complex political realities between them.” - Nacla
Panama
Panama’s Mulino administration is signaling a potential restart of operations at the country’s largest copper mine, suspended more than a year ago by the Supreme Court, because its government concession was deemed unconstitutional. The coalition of environmental and civic groups that snarled traffic for weeks in 2023 calling for the mine’s closure is preparing to hit the streets again, reports the Associated Press.
Peru
Peru’s Congress removed the interior minister from office after deciding that he had failed to adequately handle rising violent crime, reports the Associated Press.
Ecuador
“Prosecutors in Ecuador have secured an unprecedented string of convictions in a series of high-profile corruption cases that have rocked the country’s elites, but upcoming political shake ups raise doubts about the sustainability of these efforts,” reports InSight Crime.
Chile
Chile centre-right presidential candidate Evelyn Matthei praised Argentina’s austerity drive, as public spending emerges as a top issue in this year’s election, reports Bloomberg.
Regional Relations
U.S. Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced that Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had been barred from entering the US over her involvement in “significant corruption.” It is an unprecedented sanction for an Argentine former head of state, notes the Buenos Aires Times.
Kirchner retorted on social media that the move was motivated by the Trump administration’s alliance with Argentina’s rightwing politicians, and referenced Trump’s criminal convictions. (Financial Times, Página 12, Associated Press)
Argentina
Argentina’s imports are rising rapidly as libertarian President Javier Milei bets on a strong peso and cheap foreign goods to help fight inflation — though the policies put pressure on the country’s scarce hard currency reserves, reports the Financial Times.
Today is the 49th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew Isabel Perón in Argentina. The ensuing dictatorship was one of the bloodiest regimes in recent history, reports the Guardian, in which opponents and perceived dissidents were persecuted and systematically kidnapped, tortured, and killed — 30,000 people were disappeared.
The history is particularly relevant as the current Milei administration seeks to question the established narrative, and seeks to relativize the dictatorship’s atrocities and gut government programs aimed at memory and justice. (Página 12)
This year the annual human rights march in Plaza de Mayo will leverage rejection of the government’s ideology. Milei came to power in the midst of a political crisis of representation in Argentina — his opponents still have not found their footing in response to the outsider challenge. In this context, impactful street protests delineate the outer limits of resistance to Mieli’s project, they establish what we are not, I wrote in a recent Ideas Letter essay.