‘It is time for you to leave the United States’: Ukrainians receive erroneous email from Homeland Security Department

Pictured is an exterior view of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security building in Washington, DC, in January 2023. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Some Ukrainians living legally in the U.S. under a Biden-era humanitarian parole program received a notice this week from the Department of Homeland Security telling them to leave the country — a message that prompted panic and later turned out to be erroneous.

“It is time for you to leave the United States,” the department wrote Thursday to some Ukrainians in a “notice of termination of parole,” which was obtained by CNN. It added that their parole will expire in seven days and issued a warning: “Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you.”

Just a day later, those who received the email were told it was sent “in error,” according to a follow-up communication obtained by CNN. The subsequent notice also said that “no action will be taken” as indicated in the previous message, adding, “the terms of your parole as originally issued remain unchanged at this time.”

The confusing messages come as the Trump administration has attempted to crack down on immigration, including deporting hundreds of migrants it alleges are gang members and detaining pro-Palestinian student activists and Israel critics who are in the U.S. legally.

DHS confirmed in a statement to CNN that the message sent to some Ukrainians under the parole program was a mistake and that the “parole program has not been terminated.” There are also no plans to end the program, a spokesperson told CNN. DHS paused admissions under the program in January, shortly after Trump took office.

But the back-and-forth was enough to frighten a number of the Ukrainians and the Americans who are sponsoring them, according to a source familiar with the situation. The letters prompted a host of questions around whether the Ukrainians who were brought here legally beginning in 2022 would be able to continue living in the United States as long as Russia’s war with Kyiv plays out.

“This shocked everyone that received this,” said Angela Boelens, the president and founder of IA NICE, an organization that helps sponsor Ukrainian families. She went on to detail the experience of two women, one of whom is pregnant and the other who has an infant, who received the email and “were just immediately terrorized. They were crying, calling their sponsors, saying, ‘What did I do?‘”

Boelens told CNN’s “Newsroom” on Saturday that the community was “able to calm down just a little bit when we got that email saying that this was actually an error,” but the back-and-forth was traumatic.

“It’s actually left us with more questions than what we had before,” she said. “We’re asking ourselves as sponsors and as a community, you know, ‘Who wrote this letter? Why was it written in such harsh terms?‘”

In 2022, then President Joe Biden announced the “Uniting for Ukraine” program for Ukrainians seeking to come to the US as their country fought against Russia’s invasion. The program required Ukrainians seeking entry to be sponsored by a U.S. citizen or individual, including resettlement and non-profit organizations. Through this process, Ukrainian applicants were allowed to travel to the U.S. and be considered for humanitarian parole on a case-by-case basis. If accepted, the individuals were eligible for work authorization.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the DHS has criticised humanitarian parole, claiming the Biden administration abused it by extending it to multiple nationalities. The Trump administration went on to end the legal status for more than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela in the U.S. under some Biden-era parole programs, and said migrants will be looked at on “a case-by-case basis.”

Article by Jessica Dean and Kaanita Iyer.