Today, the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (“FIRRP”) and Lawyers for Civil Rights (“LCR”) filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) for their failure to produce records regarding how humanitarian parole requests are handled. The lawsuit is filed under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) based on a public records request that FIRRP and LCR submitted more than one year ago. The case was filed in the federal court in Boston.

Humanitarian parole is a critical means by which immigrants are authorized to enter the country for “humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” FIRRP provides free legal assistance to thousands of families entering the U.S. at the Arizona-Mexico border, including assisting with applications for humanitarian parole. However, FIRRP has long been concerned that CBP fails to adjudicate humanitarian parole applications in a timely manner and often fails to act on them at all.

“Humanitarian parole is lifesaving for many migrants,” said Mirian Albert, Staff Attorney at LCR and one of the counsel in the lawsuit filed today. “However, there are significant questions about how CBP decides applications for humanitarian parole. We call upon the federal court to act immediately to bring the agencies into compliance with the law and to compel the release of all responsive records that would shed light on how this process operates.”

The state of immigration laws in recent years has resulted in the gradual erosion of asylum rights beginning with the implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols (“MPP”), known as “Remain in Mexico” program, and Title 42, a mechanism that imposes a ban on asylum seekers from several countries purportedly because of public health concerns associated with COVID-19. This erosion has left immigrants with limited paths for relief. Although the MPP program was terminated in August 2022, many migrants continue to be subject to the limitations created by Title 42. With recently proposed restrictions on asylum access, humanitarian parole will continue to be an important safety valve for people in emergency situations.

“Humanitarian parole functions as a lifeline for migrants in some of the most vulnerable and dangerous situations possible,” said Laura Belous, Advocacy Attorney at FIRRP. “The public needs to understand how CBP is handling these applications and ensure that CBP is following the law when adjudicating humanitarian parole requests.”

Since 2017, FIRRP has submitted humanitarian parole requests for its most vulnerable clients, but the overwhelming majority of clients have received boilerplate denials or no response at all. As a result, already vulnerable migrants––many of whom escaped violence and persecution in their home country–have no choice but to remain in harm’s way in Mexico risking exposure to extortion, kidnapping, rape, and violence.

“It is critical that federal agencies operate in a transparent manner, especially when vulnerable individuals’ lives are at stake,” said Rebecca MacDowell Lecaroz, partner at Brown Rudnick LLP, who is leading a team of attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

The case is Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, et al., Case No. 23-CV-10479 (D. Mass.).

The complaint is attached and available here.