Source: CBS News
Updated on: April 4, 2025 / 9:45 PM EDT
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-admi ... -an-error/
The Trump administration on Friday said it accidentally told some Ukrainians refugees they needed to leave the U.S. immediately because their legal status was being revoked, telling CBS News the message was sent by mistake. Some Ukrainians who had entered the U.S. under the Biden administration following Russia's invasion of their homeland received emails this week telling them that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would be terminating their legal protections, according to advocates and a notice obtained by CBS News.
"DHS is now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole," the April 3 notice said, referring to the temporary legal status that the Biden administration granted to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. "Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate 7 days from the date of this notice." The Biden administration welcomed roughly 240,000 Ukrainians under a policy known as Uniting for Ukraine, or U4U, that allowed Americans to sponsor Ukrainians displaced by Russia's invasion. More than 20,000 Ukrainians who flew to Mexico at the start of the war were also allowed into the U.S. under the parole authority, which allows officials to offer temporary work permits and deportation protections to migrants on humanitarian grounds.
If recipients failed to leave the U.S., the message read, they would "be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States," unless they have received another immigration status. The notice also said recipients would lose their work permits once their parole status was revoked, and encouraged them to sign up for self-deportation using a government smartphone app known as CBP Home that the Trump administration recently repurposed. "Again, DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you," the notice warned. "Please depart the United States immediately."
But when CBS News asked representatives for DHS about the notice, they said it had been sent by accident. "A message was sent in error to some Ukrainians under the U4U program," DHS said in a statement to CBS News Friday. "The U4U parole program has not been terminated."