Following Venezuela’s elections on July 28, President Nicolas Maduro unleashed a wave of violent repression, including door-to-door police raids at the homes of critics and dissenters across the country.
Five days after the start of Maduro’s “campaign of terror,” I received a panicked message from my friend, a 21-year-old Venezuelan woman: “Is Biden ending humanitarian parole?”
She and I met in 2019 while I was completing a fellowship with a Latin American children’s rights organization that provided support to her and her sisters. We bonded immediately and stayed in touch even after I returned to the U.S.
Just last year, as her family desperately sought legal pathways into the U.S. to escape destitution and political violence, I learned about the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan humanitarian parole program also known as “I-134A.”
A Biden administration initiative, the parole program offers qualified individuals from these countries the opportunity to be considered for temporary travel and employment authorization in the U.S. for urgent humanitarian reasons. A critical stipulation is that applicants must secure a U.S.-based sponsor who can demonstrate sufficient financial resources to support them for the duration of their parole period.
Outside of the migrant community, this is a little-known program, but it has had unprecedented success in reducing unauthorized migration to the U.S.-Mexico border (an 89 percent decrease in unlawful encounters with individuals from the parole countries just six months after the program’s full inception).
Parole is not a new concept — it has been used by Republicans and Democrats to admit migrants since the passing of the Immigration Act of 1917, and it has proven effective at offering a legal, safe alternative to irregular migration.
I spent weeks researching the program, consulting immigration lawyers, contacting dozens of humanitarian organizations, and ultimately made the decision to submit my sponsorship application for my friend, her three siblings and their mother. However, after 301 days of waiting for approval, the Biden administration announced an indefinite pause of the program.
Since Venezuela’s fraudulent elections, approximately 600,000 people are reportedly considering leaving the country before the end of September, and an additional 930,000 plan to leave before the end of the year. How could the administration suspend one of its most effective tools for curbing irregular migration precisely when it was most crucial?
The ill-timed suspension arose in response to an internal Department of Homeland Security report that alleged fraud in the filings of U.S-based sponsors, citing primarily the presence of multiple applications from the same sponsors. Yet, I-134A explicitly permits sponsors to submit applications for multiple individuals; in fact, it mandates separate submissions for family members — a guideline I followed in my own submission.
This justification reveals an inaccurate interpretation of the program’s filing procedures by DHS’s internal fraud unit — an interpretation the agency inexplicably did not apply to identical (albeit less polarizing) parole programs, namely Uniting for Ukraine, which remains in place today and has faced no challenges in the courts.
The humanitarian parole program has been a critical component of the Biden administration’s immigration strategy. Now it has suspended a lifeline in the wake of Venezuela’s post-election crisis, effectively setting the stage for an acute migration surge with consequences that may reverberate far beyond the U.S.-Mexico border.
A recent Gallup survey revealed that more than half of Republicans, 10 percent of Democrats and almost one-third of independents view immigration to be the nation’s most pressing issue. This growing concern transforms mounting migration pressure from a policy challenge into a critical electoral liability for Vice President Harris and the broader Biden administration.
The electoral stakes are high, and a perceived mishandling of immigration policy could affect overall support for the administration, potentially swaying critical voter blocks.
For my friend, the safety and future of her family far outweigh the intricacies of immigration policies or the nuances of political debates, yet these complexities have profound consequences. The sudden suspension of the humanitarian parole program has left families like hers in limbo, and may ultimately contribute to the very migration surge it sought to prevent.
The administration has a chance to correct course and reaffirm its commitment to humane and effective migration responses that echo in the lives of those who look to our nation for refuge.
Manuela Nivia is a geopolitical consultant on Latin America with Albright Stonebridge Group.