A federal judge in Boston ruled that the Trump administration broke the law when it suddenly canceled the status of nearly 900,000 immigrants legally seeking asylum through the government’s CBP One App, NPR reports.
Tuesday’s landmark ruling restores the affected individuals’ asylum status, meaning those who used the online tool to schedule their asylum cases could be temporarily protected from deportation, according to the news outlet.
The Biden-era parole program, which launched in 2023, allowed people seeking asylum to identify themselves at eight points of entry along the U.S. Mexico border. Most of those points of entry were in Texas, at El Paso, Eagle Pass, Laredo, Hidalgo and Brownsville.
After being vetted, immigrants were allowed to enter the country while they waited for their asylum claim to be heard. Through the CBP One app, hundreds of thousands of people joined a queue and were given court dates for their cases. The CBP One app enabled the government to hear more than 1,400 claims daily, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
Trump canceled the scheduling function on the app within the first day of his second term. Subsequently, in April 2025, the administration sent emails to terminate parole en masse for roughly 900,000 immigrants who had used the app.
The administration sent emails to migrants still waiting in the queue, notifying them that their status had been revoked and that they should leave the country immediately, according to NPR.
In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs said that “when Defendants terminated the impacted noncitizens’ parole without observing the process mandated by statute and by their own regulations, they took action that was ‘not in accordance with law.'”
In a statement to NPR, officials with the Department of Homeland Security argued that Burroughs’ ruling was “blatant judicial activism.”
“Under federal law, DHS had full authority to revoke parole,” the statement said. “Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect our national security.”
The judge’s ruling applies to all migrants who came into the U.S. using CBP One from May 16, 2023, to Jan. 19, 2025.
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