BOSTON — The Biden administration built a smartphone app that let roughly 900,000 migrants from around the world bypass the Rio Grande and walk through a front door instead. Trump cancelled it his first day in office. A Boston federal judge just said he can't do that.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs — an Obama appointee — ruled Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully when it sent a mass email cancelling the parole status of everyone who had entered the country through Biden's CBP One app. The ruling, in the class action Doe et al. v. DHS, orders the administration to restore legal status for those affected.
The total number of people affected: up to 900,000.
Fox News congressional correspondent Bill Melugin — who has covered the southern border for years — put it plainly:
Remarkable. The Biden administration created out of thin air a pathway on a cell phone app for roughly 900,000 migrants from around the world to bypass the Rio Grande and enter the U.S. at ports of entry.— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 1, 2026
Trump revoked their legal status on day one. A federal judge now says no. https://t.co/UJwwmJsb7r
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by President Obama in 2014. (Official court photo)
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What was the CBP One app?
CBP One was a Biden-era program that allowed migrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry — bypassing the traditional asylum process at the southern border. Rather than crossing the Rio Grande illegally, migrants could book a slot on their phone and enter legally at a port of entry under humanitarian parole.
Critics argued the program created a backdoor to legal status for hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise have had to wait years in the formal immigration system — or not come at all. Trump terminated it on his first day in office, and DHS followed up with a mass email notifying affected migrants their parole was cancelled.
Burroughs ruled that mass email cancellation violated federal law — specifically that DHS failed to follow the procedural requirements that govern individual parole terminations under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A) and 8 C.F.R. § 212.5(e), which require a determination made on the record for each individual.
The judge who keeps saying no
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This is the fifth time Burroughs has ruled against the Trump administration. Mass Daily News has been tracking her rulings since she first made national news blocking Trump's immigration enforcement.
Her previous rulings against the administration include blocking deportations of Somali immigrants and restoring billions in federal funding tied to Harvard.
The administration is expected to appeal and seek a stay of the ruling.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts is still paying the bill
Massachusetts taxpayers have already spent over $2 billion housing migrants in hotels and emergency shelters — the highest per-capita migrant shelter spending of any state in the country. Governor Healey has pushed through hundreds of millions in emergency supplemental spending to cover the costs.
Burroughs' ruling means the CBP One program — one of the legal pathways that brought hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country during the Biden years — now has a federal court order protecting it.
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