Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Taras Atamanchuk relocated his family to safety near Houston, Texas.
The 32-year-old arrived in the United States with his wife and daughter in 2023 under former President Joe Biden’s “parole” program, designed for Ukrainians with U.S. sponsors. He secured a job as a software engineer, earning an annual salary of $120,000.
In February, he attempted to renew his two-year work permit. However, the administration of President Donald Trump had quietly halted the processing of such renewals and applications for Ukrainians.
Now, he is deeply concerned about providing for his family, which now includes a son born last year.
“I can’t work and there’s no place to go,” he said.
Within his first 100 days in office, Trump has aggressively worked to strip legal immigration status from hundreds of thousands of individuals, thereby increasing the number of people eligible for deportation as he seeks to boost removals to record levels.
The Republican president has acted to terminate humanitarian legal entry programs introduced by his Democratic predecessor and has revoked visas for thousands of students involved in protests or who have minor criminal records, including traffic violations.
The sweeping nature of the crackdown has shocked many immigrants who lost their legal status. Some Democrats have condemned Trump’s tough tactics, particularly as plainclothes and masked immigration agents have begun conducting raids on homes, workplaces, and university campuses.
Public opinion is divided over Trump’s immigration policy. However, a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-April showed that he has a 45 percent approval rating on immigration—his highest among major issues.
“The message that his campaign gave is, ‘We’re going to go after the criminals,’ but what he is doing is a much, much broader effort,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigrant advocacy organization.
In March, Trump stated he was considering revoking the legal status of the 240,000 Ukrainians admitted under Biden’s parole program. A similar attempt to strip legal status from 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans was blocked by a federal court earlier this month.
The Trump administration has combined its enforcement measures with a campaign encouraging undocumented migrants in the U.S. to “self-deport,” imposing steep fines and emphasizing deportation to infamous prisons in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay.
Polina Hlova, 25, from Dnipro, Ukraine, worked as a dental assistant in Florida. She and her husband lost their work permits in March. She said she constantly checks for updates on her pending applications and that the stress has been unbearable.
“My emotions, I can’t control it,” she said. “I’m just crying every day.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai defended the administration’s actions, arguing they are aimed at dismantling Biden-era programs seen as illegal.
“The Trump administration is not ‘stripping legal status from immigrants’—it is unwinding the Biden administration’s illegal paroling of hundreds of thousands of aliens into the United States,” Desai stated. “Aliens who have not received asylum or other legal status to remain in the United States cannot be allowed to remain in our country indefinitely.”
Desai added that parole programs should only be applied on a case-by-case basis when there is a “significant public benefit.”
LEAVE NOW
Earlier this month, immigration attorneys reported that clients who had used a Biden-era app to schedule border-crossing appointments were being pressured to leave the U.S. The app, initially called CBP One and intended to reduce border chaos, has been rebranded by the Trump administration as CBP Home, now serving as a tool for facilitating self-deportation.
Migrants who had legally entered using CBP One received brief emails notifying them that their legal status had been revoked. The message read: “It is time for you to leave the United States.”
Claudia, 35, her husband, and their four children entered the U.S. using the app in August 2023 after fleeing gang threats in Michoacan, Mexico, and applied for asylum. On April 11, while checking for school emails in California’s Central Valley, she received the status-revocation message. Though written in English, her email provider auto-translated it into Spanish. “I felt dizzy,” she said.
Desai harshly criticized the CBP One program.
“The fact of the matter is that the Biden administration’s CBP One app was an illegal tool to effectively launder illegal immigration by allowing would-be illegal border crossers to obtain flimsy legal grounds to just walk right into the United States,” he said.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, claimed Trump’s policies have “restored integrity to our immigration system, ended policies that were magnets to illegal immigration, and delivered a clear message to illegal aliens to self-deport or face the consequences.”
She noted that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 145,000 immigration violators during Trump’s first three months—up from 113,000 in all of fiscal year 2024. Deportations, however, decreased to 130,000 in the same period from 195,000 last year due to more frequent border encounters under Biden’s term that enabled rapid return of migrants.
VISAS REVOKED
The Trump administration surprised major universities with the arrests of students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, including Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and permanent resident, raising concerns over free speech.
Starting in March, ICE submitted hundreds of foreign student names to the State Department requesting visa revocations, according to a U.S. official unauthorized to speak publicly. Initially, the list included students who had police contact during protests; later, it expanded to those with minor criminal charges, including traffic offenses.
The State Department declined to comment.
On April 8, Indian PhD student Prasanna Oruganti at Ohio State University received a university email stating her status had been terminated in the ICE-managed SEVIS database. The reason cited was: “Other — individual identified in criminal records check and/or has their visa revoked.”
Oruganti had not received any prior notice that her visa had been revoked. Her only criminal record was a traffic misdemeanor—misjudging a turn and hitting decorative bricks, according to court documents.
Oruganti filed a lawsuit, and a judge temporarily blocked the termination, allowing her to continue her studies.
The Trump administration, in a court filing on Friday, stated it would reinstate previously revoked student statuses but is looking for alternative enforcement strategies.
A mechanical engineering student at the University of California, Riverside, just one quarter shy of graduating, was similarly affected. Identified as VJ in court documents, the 23-year-old Indian national expressed confusion over his status revocation.
“It didn’t make any sense, I was super confused,” he said.
He has lived in the U.S. since he was 10, as a dependent on his mother’s H-1B visa. During college, he was arrested for public intoxication—a fact he disclosed when applying for his student visa.
He, too, has filed a lawsuit to reinstate his status but fears detention or deportation.
“I still don’t know if I can go to class or not,” he said. “I’ve just been completely under the radar.”
