You can’t claim a collective benefit by fiat—and then have attorneys you’ve never met invoke individualized review to shield it from repeal.
Yet that’s precisely the strategy now being deployed against the Trump administration—in a Massachusetts courtroom.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction in a class action lawsuit, blocking the administration from terminating legal status and work permits for more than 530,000 foreign nationals—most of whom were flown directly into the U.S. interior under a Biden-era mass parole scheme known as CHNV.
The injunction, like the lawsuit behind it, is riddled with contradictions. The Biden administration granted status through a blanket policy with no individualized review—immigration by algorithm. The Trump administration is being told it cannot revoke that status without individualized review—in a class action demanding collectivized judicial relief for all.
The CHNV case exists in a kind of procedural superposition: simultaneously individualized, collective, and then individualized again—Schrödinger’s jurisdiction, engineered to collapse in whichever direction best obstructs…
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