By Camilo Montoya-Galvez
March 31, 2026 / CBS News
A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore the legal status of migrants who were allowed into the U.S. under a Biden-era program that used a phone app to process asylum-seekers at the southern border.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs vacated the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the immigration parole status of people admitted through the Biden-era CBP One system, finding the revocation violated required procedures under U.S. law. The program initially used a phone app that the second Trump administration later repurposed and renamed CBP Home to encourage self-deportations of people in the country without authorization.
More than 900,000 migrants from around the world were admitted at official ports of entry along the southern border under CBP One. It is unclear how many will benefit from the court’s order, since some may already have been deported or obtained other lawful status.
The Justice Department is expected to appeal the ruling.
The Biden administration had argued that CBP One reduced illegal crossings by allowing prospective border crossers to enter with government permission. Trump officials countered that the Biden administration lacked authority to create such a program and that it improperly permitted hundreds of thousands to enter outside traditional immigration processes.
In April 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was ending the parole status of those processed under CBP One, urging them to self-deport or face potential detection, arrest and removal.
On Tuesday, DHS said it retained the authority to revoke parole and criticized the ruling as judicial overreach that undermines the President’s Article II power to decide who may remain in the country. The department accused the Biden administration of abusing parole authority under the “disastrous” CBP One program and said it allowed millions into the U.S., worsening the border situation.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which challenged the parole terminations in court, said the order rejected “a harmful and destabilizing policy.” Perryman added that the ruling rebuked an administration that attempted to strip lawful status from hundreds of thousands “with the click of a button,” and emphasized that the group’s clients had followed the law by waiting, registering, being inspected and receiving parole.