Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
Second Mass. attorney mistakenly told to leave the U.S. despite being a citizen
As the Trump administration urges hundreds of thousands of people to leave, some immigration attorneys are receiving the shocking emails directly.
A second Boston-based immigration attorney reportedly received a notice from the Department of Homeland Security recently notifying them that their “parole” had been revoked. The message, which was apparently sent in error, directed both attorneys to leave the U.S. at once.
Carmen Bello, who has offices in East Boston, was the latest to receive the notice. Last Friday, she opened an email titled “Notice of Termination of Parole” addressed to her from DHS. In the email, officialds told her to “depart the United States immediately” or risk criminal prosecution, civil fines, and other penalties, according to The Boston Globe.
Advertisement:
Bello became a U.S. citizen in 2007. She has been practicing immigration law for 14 years. She did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
But Bello told the Globe that she believes the email was sent in error because her email address is listed in the parole application of one of her clients.
The same day, Nicole Micheroni received an identical email telling her to leave the country. Micheroni, an immigration lawyer and Massachusetts native who has an office in downtown Boston, posted screenshots of the letter on Bluesky.
A DHS spokesperson confirmed to Boston.com that the agency is terminating parole for immigrants in the country temporarily, including more than 900,000 who entered using the Biden administration’s CBP One app. That app was designed to streamline the process for asylum seekers entering the U.S., but the Trump administration shut it down in January.
Advertisement:
People in the U.S. through the U4U program, which is available to displaced Ukrainians, and the OAW program, which is available to displaced Afghans, are not being impacted by the CBP One parole terminations, the DHS spokesperson said.
The CBP One app used email addresses to send notifications to users. If “non-personal” email addresses were used, then notices may have been sent to “unintended recipients.” Officials will address any issues on a “case-by-case” basis, the spokesperson said.
In a follow-up thread on Bluesky, Micheroni said that mass emails like the one she received were sent to everyone that processed their parole through the app.
“The system doesn’t let you include an attorney’s contact info, so we still have no idea how I ended up on the list,” she said.
Micheroni specified that a deportation order and a revocation of parole are not the same thing. Therefore, these emails do not officially initiate deportation proceedings. She urged any immigrant who received the email to consult with an immigration attorney because they “may still have options.”
Bello told NBC10 Boston that many of her clients had received the email. She called out “a lack of responsibility” on display from DHS officials.
Advertisement:
The Trump administration is also planning to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead in order to cancel their Social Security numbers and incentivize them to leave the U.S., the Associated Press reported.
The federal government is also attempting to revoke the parole of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who came to the U.S. under a humanitarian program set up by the Biden administration. A federal judge in Boston has halted that effort for now.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com