AILSA CHANG, HOST:
More than 900,000 would-be asylum seekers who entered the U.S. legally under the Biden administration are now being given just one week to leave the country under President Trump. You see, they used a smartphone app that regulated the number of asylum-seekers and granted them humanitarian parole that allowed them to legally live and work here temporarily. Now the order to leave while many of them have asylum cases pending in court has them confused about what to do. KJZZ's Alisa Reznick reports from Tucson.
ALISA REZNICK, BYLINE: Wendy Lopez fled gang violence in El Salvador and she and her family spent years trying to get asylum in the U.S. In 2023, they legally entered the U.S. from Mexico using the CBP One phone app. That granted them humanitarian parole, which generally allows recipients to stay and legally work in the U.S. for two years. Lopez's family was then granted asylum by a judge last fall. She says she felt a surge of relief.
WENDY LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
REZNICK: "I know it's almost impossible for most people to win an asylum case here," she says. But less than a month later, the Biden administration's Department of Homeland Security appealed her case.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
REZNICK: "Imagine feeling all that joy," she says, "Then a few days later, back to uncertainty." They've been awaiting new appeal proceedings since then. Then a week ago, they received an email from DHS saying they had seven days to leave the U.S.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
REZNICK: "I felt something so ugly in my chest," she says. "A horrible worry." Dora Rodriguez, an immigrant rights activist in Tucson, says now people receiving the DHS notices are confused. Are they supposed to wait to hear about their case or follow the new orders to leave?
DORA RODRIGUEZ: You know, we have families who said, well, I'm just going to hide because I cannot go back to my home country. I will be killed, so I prefer to hide.
REZNICK: She says, others are so terrified of getting separated from their children that they're choosing to leave on their own. A Venezuelan family she knows had just packed up and went to Mexico.
RODRIGUEZ: They don't know how Mexico is going to treat them,, or they're going to go back to be in the hands of the organized crime.
REZNICK: Monica Cordero with the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project says people with active immigration cases have the right to stay and fight those cases. Leaving even voluntarily could risk formal deportation and potential bars from entering the U.S. again.
MONICA CORDERO: According to the law, if they don't show up for an existing court hearing, the judge has the authority to issue a removal order, a deportation order.
REZNICK: Migrants and advocates say the notices have been sent out broadly. Even some U.S.-born attorneys have reported receiving them. DHS officials did not respond to an interview request for this story and, in a statement, didn't say what happens to those already in active asylum cases. It said the agency is canceling parole statuses using discretionary authority. Esther Sung with the Justice Action Center says that's unprecedented on this scale.
ESTHER SUNG: Never before in the history of the parole authority granted to the executive has the president or the executive attempted to engage in mass revocations of individual grants of parole.
REZNICK: Wendy Lopez, the Salvadoran mother, says her family is waiting to hear from their lawyer but says sometimes this type of situation breaks a person.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
REZNICK: "But I say we must not give up. We must fight for what we want," she says, "above all, for the wellbeing of our children." For NPR News, I'm Alisa Reznick in Tucson.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.