Judge Indira Talwani blocks Trump from ending Biden-era immigration program

A federal judge in Massachusetts has moved to prevent President Donald Trump from canceling a program introduced under his predecessor, Joe Biden, that grants parole and the right to work to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV).

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled Monday that migrants from those nations can remain in the United States and continue to seek permission to work legally or apply for adjustment of status.

“If their parole status is allowed to lapse, plaintiffs will be faced with two unfavorable options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings,” Justice Talwani reasoned in her 41-page ruling.

“If plaintiffs leave the country on their own, they will face dangers in their native countries, as set forth in their affidavits.

“For some plaintiffs, leaving will also cause family separation. Leaving may also mean plaintiffs will have forfeited any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their APA [Administrative Procedure Act] claims, as leaving may moot those claims.”

Under the policy, migrants from the four nations are permitted to stay in America for up to two years while they apply for residency, provided they pass a health and background check and name a financial sponsor.

Half a million people have taken advantage of its protections since its introduction.

Talwani’s intervention prevents Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has already ended protections from deportation for immigrants from Afghanistan and Cameroon, from closing the CHNV program by April 24 as she had intended.

The judge at the center of the case is herself, the daughter of immigrants to the United States from India and Germany.

Born in Englewood, New Jersey, on October 6, 1960, Talwani graduated cum laude from Harvard’s Radford College in 1982 and earned her Juris Doctor from the University of California Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1988.

She began her legal career as a clerk to U.S. District Judge Stanley Weigel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California between 1988 and 1989 and then worked as an associate and then partner at San Francisco law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP, specializing in labor and employment cases.

In 1999, she moved east to take up a position at Boston’s Segal Roitman LLP. Again, she worked in employment litigation and made a name for herself in workplace rights, also overseeing union negotiations and arbitrations.

She was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama in September 2013 to fill the seat vacated by Judge Mark L Wolf and confirmed by the Senate in May 2014.

Her most high-profile case prior to her run-in with the Trump administration was the college admissions scandal of 2019, which saw her sentence Desperate Housewives actress Felicity Huffman to 14 days behind bars after she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.