Two Champlain Valley Union High School students are being forced to leave the U.S., after an order from the Department of Homeland Security suspended a legal parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

The two Champlain Valley teenagers are originally from Nicaragua and have been in the U.S. for less than a year under the program, which the Department of Homeland Security prematurely ended March 25, giving people 30 days to leave the U.S. The program is set up to allow for two years of legal residence in the U.S.

The students’ family plans to comply with the order and exit the country by the end of the month, according to Christina Daudelin, a student and community engagement facilitator for the Champlain Valley School District. Because the students are minors and the specter of returning to Nicaragua poses additional safety concerns, the school has not shared the students’ names or identifying details.   

Otherwise school has been “operating as normal” to preserve a sense of balance, Daudelin said. The school is planning an early graduation ceremony to take place next week so the students will have their diplomas before they have to leave.

“This is really personal for a lot of us. We have personal relationships with the students, and we are feeling helpless and caught up in something we can’t change,” she said.

Adam Bunting, the superintendent of the school district, shared the news with community members in an email Wednesday. 

“These students are not political operatives. They are not criminals. They are not threats,” Bunting wrote. “They are young people who have found safety and meaning in our community. They’ve made friends, joined clubs, and played in the snow here for the first time. They’ve done what all teenagers do: tried to figure out who they are, where they belong, what they care about.”

“Now, because of a shift in federal policy, their lives are being upended—again,” Bunting went on. “When we talk about immigration, we must remember that there are people behind every policy–in this case young people who dream of going to college.”

The humanitarian parole designation that allows the students to be here is not a legal status, rather a permission to enter the country, according to Brett Stokes, the director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law School. Essentially it’s a way for people to live in the U.S.  while they are looking for more permanent routes for residency and work eligibility.

“It doesn’t replace the need or eligibility for asylum or other programs,” Stokes said. Many people simultaneously apply for asylum while they are in the U.S. under humanitarian parole. Though he is not familiar with the specifics of the two students’ cases, those routes could be open to them in the future. 

“Do I think this termination of parole is legal? No, probably not,” Stokes said. “My interpretation is that the goal here, really, was to scare a lot of people into self-deporting.”

Though President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to expand expedited removals — that is deportations without due process — it flies in the face of existing statute, Stokes said. 

“I know that is illegal,” he said.

The school’s decision to broadcast the news of the students’ terminated parole and decision to leave was a fraught one, as the school hoped to protect the students’ safety and privacy, but administrators decided it was best to get the word out. 

“We wanted to give families an ability to make meaning of this situation,” Bunting said in an interview. “We think every family deserves a chance to have that discussion.”

He also stressed the importance of realizing that the impacts of federal action are being felt locally. 

“I think when people are thinking of federal policy, they’re thinking of headlines in universities and big cities, that this isn’t something that happens here. There are impacts in our community, to our kids and to the values of Vermont,” he said. “I was upset with myself and my own ignorance of what our colleagues are dealing with across the state and country.”

Bunting said Champlain Valley is coordinating with other districts in the state and working with the Vermont Superintendents Association as part of its response. He planned to meet with Education Secretary Zoie Saunders on Thursday afternoon. 

It’s not lost on Bunting that this news comes in the middle of an ongoing dispute over whether the state should certify its schools as complying with a federal nondiscrimination requirement, Title VI, following an April 3 letter from the U.S. Department of Education claiming noncompliance could result in the loss of some federal funding. 

“It’s hard to separate this from the ongoing stuff surrounding Title VI,” Bunting said. “We have some hard decisions to make about what we will do when our values are being compromised and challenged.” 

He sees this as a moment for the community to rearticulate and commit to its values of supporting one another. How exactly that will look is still being worked out.

“We’re still trying to find a meaningful way to respond that isn’t reactionary,” said Becky Gamble, the founder and co-leader of Champlain Valley Indivisible. “These moments do call for recognition of what really are our values and as a community, what we are willing to stand up for. We’re having a reckoning with what really matters to us.”  

Since the school district made the information public, it has received an outpouring of support and desire from community members to help. Daudelin has been sharing resources for people to call state and federal legislators to advocate for state-level deportation defense funding and to ask that Vermont’s delegation oppose the new deportation process.

She has also invited people to drop off cards at the school and said that she would soon have more information about a potential in-person show of support.

“It’s a human rights issue. Even if you can take politics out, we decide who the community is,” she said. “These students are our community, and they are us.”

Bunting said he wished people in decision making positions could sit with the students, as he did Wednesday. They’d see two highly motivated students who care deeply about their education and the state that they now call home, Bunting said. 

They are “nothing short of inspirational,” he added, but, like any teenager would be, they are scared of not knowing what’s awaiting them.