Victory! First Circuit Allows Rollback of
Invasion by Appointment
IRLI—now part of FAIR—showed President has full authority to send parolees home
WASHINGTON—On Friday evening, the First Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower-court order blocking the Trump Administration’s termination of a Biden mass parole program. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), which has since joined the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), had filed a brief in the First Circuit supporting the President’s authority to roll back Biden mass parole programs that let millions of aliens who are not immigrants come to the United States.
In one parole program alone, the Biden Administration let 532,000 aliens from four countries—Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—sign up on an app and come to ports of entry, where they were given automatic parole and sent into the interior of the country. The Trump Administration terminated these grants of parole, but the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued an order blocking the terminations.
In its brief urging the First Circuit to reverse this order, IRLI showed that President Trump has authority directly from the Constitution to terminate these grants of parole. The Supreme Court has long recognized that those given parole—which by statute must only be given case-by-case for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, requirements Biden ignored—have not even entered the country in a legal sense. As far as the law is concerned, they are still at the border, wherever they are physically located. And the Supreme Court has also long recognized that the President has inherent constitutional authority to block aliens from entering the country.
On Friday, the First Circuit, noting that parolees have not entered the country in a legal sense, upheld the terminations under the parole statute.
“No President can let in aliens on his own authority,” said Christopher J. Hajec, deputy general counsel of FAIR. “At the same time, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the President’s inherent power to keep aliens out. That power, and the clear terms of the parole statute, allowed him to terminate these grants of parole. We are pleased the court saw the lawlessness of the lower court’s injunction, and let Trump go on rolling back Biden’s invasion app.”
The case is Doe v. Noem, No. 25-1384 (First Circuit).
