With 1 month to leave the U.S., Haitians and others scramble for next steps

Until this week, Nickey’s story had all the hallmarks of an American dream in the making. She’s in her second year of community college, works three jobs and serves as a student trustee on the board at her school.

Nickey came to the U.S. two years ago from Haiti under a program known as humanitarian parole. She said it was a lifesaver — literally — as it allowed her to get out of a country sinking ever deeper into chaos.

Without the program, "I would probably not be where I am right now," she said. "I could have been dead. But here I had the opportunity to grow — away from all this turmoil. I would say it's a chance in a lifetime."

Nickey, who is 21, said she's felt at home in the U.S. since she arrived. But this week the Trump Administration announced it’s ending the policy that allowed her and 530,000 others to come to the U.S.: humanitarian parole for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua, or CHNV.

WBUR agreed to use Nickey's nickname because she fears speaking out could make her a target for deportation.

“Immigration is going crazy,” she said. “People with green cards are getting deported, people applying for asylum are getting deported. So you just don't know where you stand.”

Nickey said her world has turned upside down in recent days. She’s afraid she could lose the life she’s building here.

“It just feels like [what] I thought was a dream come true, is turning into a nightmare," she said. "And there's no way to stop it.”

Nickey’s uncle sponsored her journey to Boston under the humanitarian parole program. It was created by the Biden Administration as a legal route for people from places facing economic and humanitarian crises — and more than half a million people were cleared to fly to the U.S.

The program's goal was to reduce the number of migrants appearing at the southwest border, where officials said an "all time high" number of immigrants attempted to cross without authorization in 2022. The effort seems to have worked. But on Tuesday, the Trump administration said the rationale for the policy is no longer valid, as border encounters have decreased dramatically since President Trump took office.

People like Nickey have until April 25 to leave the U.S., face deportation or get new legal status. She applied for asylum, and now she’s waiting to hear whether immigration officials will allow her application to proceed.

“ That's the only option that I have because I can't go back to Haiti,” she said. “Going back to my country right now is just death for me.”

Haiti has been wracked by gang violence in recent years, and according to the United Nations, nearly 10% of the population has been displaced.

William O’Neill, a United Nations expert on Haiti, recently traveled to the island nation. Earlier this month, he said that he's never seen Haiti in a worse situation, and countries deporting Haitians should reconsider returning them to a place where the capital city is cut off from the rest of the country and doesn’t have a functioning airport.

“How are they going to get back?” O’Neill asked. “And then what are they facing in the capital? Violence. Shortages of everything. A million already displaced … You cannot guarantee a dignified safe return, which is required under international law to forcibly deport people.”

Despite the dire situation, humanitarian parole was never meant to be a permanent legal status. It was designed to last just two years.

Nickey’s parole was set to expire in August, but she assumed that by then she would secure a visa or be in line for asylum, which would buy her more time.

Matt Cameron, an immigration lawyer in Boston, is dealing with multiple cases similar to Nickey’s. He said parolees could begin receiving notices to appear in immigration court, and be placed into removal proceedings.

“I've got plenty of people that were expecting to be able to remain until well into next year that are now having to make other decisions,” Cameron said.

Of the half million people whose humanitarian parole is ending, Cameron said some may choose to go back to their countries. Returning to their countries voluntarily could allow them to return to the U.S. legally in the future, he said, whereas getting deported would make that much harder, if not impossible.

The U.S. government is also curtailing a host of other immigration programs aimed at protecting people from countries in turmoil, including one known as Temporary Protected Status or TPS. Between the two programs, nearly 900,000 Haitians and Venezuelans are on track to lose their immigration status.

A legal challenge is pending to stop the White House from ending humanitarian parole programs for Haiti and Venezuela, as well as initiatives designed for Ukrainians and Afghans.

Cameron said his clients are watching closely. When Trump tried to end TPS during his first administration, a judge blocked the move, and the program survived.

Jeff Thielman, head of the International Institute of New England, a nonprofit that serves many of the immigrants with humanitarian parole in Massachusetts, said thousands of people are likely to be affected by Trump's reversal of programs like CHNV parole.

Thielman's group administers an employment program for 1,000 people, and about 80% of them are humanitarian parolees from from Haiti. He's helped place them in jobs ranging from  food prep to hospital orderlies to home health care aids.

"We're very concerned that all of a sudden, at the end of April, their status could be ended, and they could lose their right to work," he said. " And that would be a disaster for the state.

"All those people are going to be impacted, and that is not good for this economy."

A court order could be the only chance for people like Nickey to stay in the U.S. legally. Regardless of what happens, she said Trump is laying waste to the image of the United States as a beacon of hope.

“ You're making enemies out of people that have been friends with you for a long time,” she said. “The idea of America being the land of freedom, the land of opportunity, how is destroying that benefiting America?”

For now, Nickey continues to study and work. She’s applying to three different colleges in Boston, and she still hasn’t given up her dream of going to law school one day.