In a textbook example of judicial activism, a federal judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to restore order to the U.S. immigration system.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs — an appointee of Barack Obama — issued a ruling that prevents the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants who entered the country under a controversial Biden-era program.
The ruling is a significant blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the “CBP One” app system. Launched in 2023 under then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the app allowed nearly one million noncitizens from countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti to schedule appointments at ports of entry and receive “humanitarian parole.” This status allowed them to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely while awaiting asylum hearings that are often scheduled years into the future.
In April 2025, fulfilling a core campaign promise to secure the border and initiate mass deportations, the Trump administration notified approximately 900,000 CBP One users via email that their parole had been terminated. “Please depart the United States immediately,” the notice read.
Burroughs sided with a class-action lawsuit led by the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts and represented by the liberal legal group Democracy Forward. She ruled that the blanket revocation was “not in accordance with law,” arguing that DHS failed to provide individualized records proving that the “purposes of parole” had been served for each migrant before revoking their status.
The Department of Homeland Security responded with a blistering statement, accusing Burroughs of overstepping her bounds. “We disagree with this blatant judicial activism undermining the president’s Article II authority to determine who remains in this country,” a DHS spokesperson said. “The Biden administration abused the parole authority … to allow millions of illegal aliens into the U.S., which further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history.”
The spokesperson emphasized that the administration remains committed to its self-deportation initiatives, including the “CBP Home App,” which offers migrants $2,600 and a flight home to avoid arrest.
For those following Judge Burroughs’ career, Tuesday’s ruling came as little surprise. She has a long history of high-profile clashes with the Trump administration’s agenda. In 2017, she was among the first judges to block Trump’s initial travel ban. Most notably, in 2019, she ruled in favor of Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions program — a decision that was later famously overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the university’s use of race to be unconstitutional. More recently, in 2025, she struck down the administration’s attempt to freeze federal funding for the Ivy League institution.
With nearly a million parolees now allowed to remain in the country due to a single district court order, the administration is expected to appeal the decision to the First Circuit immediately.
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