Indian American Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump From Ending Biden’s Parole Program for Immigrants

An Indian American federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily halted a Biden-era program that allowed thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to temporarily live in the United States. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled earlier this week that migrants from the four countries can remain here, where they could obtain authorization to legally work or apply for adjustment of status. 

With this ruling, Talwani is “temporarily barring the Department of Homeland Security from doing away with their status as part of the federal government’s effort to shut down the program by April 24,” The Hill reported. The Trump administration had said last month it was moving to revoke the legal status of some 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who came to the United States under a parole program initially launched by Biden in October 2022. 

“While [Trump administration officials] are correct that the Secretary’s discretion in this area is broad, their conclusion that the Secretary’s actions are wholly shielded from judicial review is incorrect,” Talwani wrote in in a 41-page order filed in Boston federal court. Her role in reviewing the agency’s revocation order is “limited,” she said she “has the authority to stay the secretary’s termination of parole” for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans because “it revokes, without case-by-case review, previously granted parole and work authorizations for individuals currently in the United States.”

As The New York Times noted, the decision came as the Trump administration “moved to end legal protections for migrants from many countries, including by shutting down a program granting legal status to Afghan and Cameroonian migrants.’

According to The Hill, the ruling, for now, “signals a major victory” for these paroled immigrants, “who sued the Trump administration in the hope of remaining in the United States for a two-year period.” In a separate order on April 14, Talwani also “certified the group as a class,” the Hill said. 

Who is Indira Talwani

Nominated by President Obama on Sept. 24, 2013, to a seat vacated by Mark L. Wolf. She was confirmed by the Senate on May 8, 2014, and received her commission on May 12. She is the first person of Asian descent to serve as a judge in Massachusetts and in the First Circuit, which includes Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, and Rhode Island. She is also only the second female judge of South Asian descent nationwide. 

The daughter of immigrants to the United States from India and Germany, she was born in Englewood, New Jersey. Her father, Manik Talwani, was a renowned geophysicist. 

Talwani graduated cum laude from Harvard’s Radford College in 1982 and earned her Juris Doctor from the University of California Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1988. At Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, she served as Articles Editor for the Industrial Relations Law Journal and was selected for the Order of the Coif. Before law school, she worked as a union organizer. 

She began her legal career as a clerk to U.S. District Judge Stanley Weigel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California between 1988 and 1989 and then worked as an associate and then partner at San Francisco law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP, specializing in labor and employment cases.

In 1999, she moved east to take up a position at Boston’s Segal Roitman LLP. Again, she worked in employment litigation and made a name for herself in workplace rights, also overseeing union negotiations and arbitrations.

Talwani is married to Tod Cochran. The couple lives in Newton, Massachusetts.