If Trump Revokes Ukrainian Refugees’ Legal Status, Many in California Fear Deportation

Panic is surging in Northern California’s Ukrainian community over reports that the Trump administration may soon revoke humanitarian parole for 280,000 people who fled the war in Ukraine and potentially deport them.

Many Ukrainians are full of questions, including whether they will be forcibly detained or deported if parole is revoked and what will happen to their U.S.-born children, said Karen Bird, an immigration lawyer with Jewish Family and Community Services in Concord. She said she’s encouraging Ukrainian clients to apply for any other kind of immigration status they might qualify for, but the options are few.

“Anxiety levels are off the charts,” she said. “My heart breaks for my clients. In the past few weeks, they have had their fears increase about the war in Ukraine, and now they fear they’ll have to leave the safety and homes they have here in the U.S. I pray the U.S. doesn’t abandon them.”

The Ukrainians were granted temporary protection in the U.S. and work authorization under a Biden-era program called Uniting for Ukraine (PDF). President Donald Trump halted the program on his first day in office but didn’t immediately revoke parole status for Ukrainians.

On Thursday, Reuters first reported that the administration was planning to terminate parole for Ukrainians as soon as April, as part of a plan to revoke humanitarian protection for 1.8 million people who obtained it under the Biden administration, including Afghans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. The news agency cited four unnamed sources familiar with the matter, including a senior Trump administration official.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt disputed the report in a social media post, calling it “fake news” and saying “no decision has been made at this time.”

Later that day, Reuters reported that Trump told reporters in the Oval Office he would decide soon, saying, “We’re not looking to hurt anybody, we’re certainly not looking to hurt them.”

The growing insecurity over parole comes at a time when many Ukrainians in the U.S. are frantic over Trump’s halt to military aid and intelligence for Ukraine as Russia continues its bombardment, three years after invading the country.

“Witnessing what this administration is doing against the victims is very painful,” said Ulyana Balaban, a lawyer from Ukraine who’s now a U.S. citizen raising a family in San José. “They are punishing Ukrainians. The people I know, my friends who came here, they work. They’re not using any taxpayers’ money. It’s just not fair to treat people like that.”

Balaban, 44, said her mother lives in a Russian-occupied area of the city of Kherson, and soldiers frequently come into her house and check every room. Her cousins, a maternity nurse and a fisherman, were tortured and murdered by Russian troops, she said.

She fears her autistic brother, who is with her in San José under a different humanitarian program called Temporary Protected Status, could be sent back there.

“They try to recruit young men to join the Russian Army. So my brother does not have a place to go back home,” Balaban said. “We’re desperate. I don’t know what to do.”

Ruslan Gurzhiy, the editor of the news organization Slavic Sacramento, said the majority of Ukrainians with parole are women with children who are now in local schools. At a recent online forum for leaders in California’s Ukrainian diaspora, many of those women voiced concerns and anxiety, he said.

“Psychologically, mentally, they’ve had traumas. They lost their homes. Some of them lost their husbands in Ukraine,” he said. “And now the United States would send them back to Ukraine?”

Lesia Kotova, a Bay Area software analyst, grew up in Zaporizhzhya, another Ukrainian city now occupied by Russia. She said she lived for years in Moscow before fleeing growing repression under President Vladimir Putin.

Now, in Palo Alto, she was able to sponsor her mother for parole under the Uniting for Ukraine program. But their family home in Zaporizhzhya was destroyed by bombs, leaving nothing to return to.

She called Trump’s withdrawal of support for Ukraine’s defense and threats to revoke humanitarian parole “ruthless.”

“People feel fear,” she said. “And they’re really surprised by such ‘Russian behavior’ from the government of the best country in the world.”

For her part, Balaban said she felt a sense of welcome when she became a U.S. citizen, but now she questions the promise of America as a place of refuge.

“I always thought that this country was safe for other people … sort of like an umbrella for those who were seeking asylum and help,” she said. “And right now, I just don’t feel that way.”