HOUSTON, United States

The legal status of 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the US under former President Joe Biden's sponsorship process was revoked Friday by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to reports.

More than half a million people from those countries were welcomed to the US after October 2022 through Biden's two-year program called CHNV, which allowed them to obtain legal permits to live and work, as long as they had financial sponsors.

But the new order signed by DHS chief Kristi Noem ends that program and all of the temporary residents will lose their legal status April 24 and will be mandated to go back to their respective home countries.

The revocation of their temporary legal residencies is a direct result of President Donald Trump following up on his campaign promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants in America and end legal pathways for them to come to the US and stay.

Trump previously said he wanted to end the "broad abuse" of humanitarian parole, which has been used for decades to allow people from other countries where there is war or political instability to legally enter the US and temporarily live.

All parolees under the CHNV program must now depart the US before their parole termination date at the end of April because they will no longer have legal status to stay. If they decide to stay illegally, they could be deported if they are caught by immigration officials.

"Parole is inherently temporary, and parole alone is not an underlying basis for obtaining any immigration status," DHS officials said in a statement.

Immigration activists and lawyers have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to reinstate the CHNV program.

Karen Tumlin, the founder and director of Justice Action Center, which filed the lawsuit, said revoking the program is "reckless, cruel and counterproductive" and is "going to cause needless chaos and heartbreak for families and communities across the country."

Trump's hard stance on immigration could soon affect 240,000 Ukrainians living in the US who fled their country after Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine in 2022. On March 6, Trump said he would be deciding on the fate of Ukrainians, which could also revoke their temporary legal status in the US as soon as April.