The Trump administration was blocked late Saturday from revoking the legal status of thousands of migrants, thanks to a ruling from a federal judge who has frequently thwarted the administration’s immigration policies.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled late Saturday that the Trump administration could not revoke a Biden-era family reunification parole program, which affects more than 8,400 Cubans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, Haitians, Hondurans, and Salvadorans in the country. In her ruling, Talwani said the decision to end the program was not well reasoned to consider concerns of the people affected.
“The Secretary could not provide a reasoned explanation of the agency’s change in policy without acknowledging these interests,” Talwani said in her ruling. “Accordingly, failure to do so was arbitrary and capricious.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in its December 2025 announcement that the program “allowed poorly vetted aliens to circumvent the traditional parole process” and that the federal government would return to deciding such immigration cases on “a case-by-case basis, as intended by Congress.”
“The desire to reunite families does not overcome the government’s responsibility to prevent fraud and abuse and to uphold national security and public safety. The [family reunification parole] programs had security gaps caused by insufficient vetting that malicious and fraudulent actors could exploit to enter the United States, which posed an unacceptable level of risk to the United States,” DHS said in its announcement ending the program.
The Trump administration can appeal Talwani’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st District.
Talwani has served as a federal judge since 2014 but has garnered national headlines over the past year after becoming one of the most frequent roadblocks for the Trump administration with her rulings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Many of her rulings on key Trump administration policies and actions have been overruled by higher courts.
The Obama-appointed judge previously ruled against the mandatory detention of illegal immigrants accused of theft and stopped the Trump administration from ending a Biden-era mass parole program for more than 530,000 migrants flown into the U.S., among other rulings. Her ruling mandating the mass-parole program to continue was later lifted by the Supreme Court.
Talwani has also issued other rulings against the Trump administration, which have later been lifted by higher courts. She attempted to block a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that prevents Medicaid reimbursements to abortion providers through a pair of rulings that were both lifted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.
The federal judge also has a history of donating to Democratic politicians and causes, according to campaign finance records.
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The court Talwani sits on, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, has become a popular venue for opponents of the president to file their lawsuits due to the high number of Democrat-appointed judges on the bench.
The District of Massachusetts, alongside the Districts of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern California, has been one of the most frequent spots for lawsuits to be filed against Trump — and for adverse Trump rulings to be issued.