The Department of Homeland Security said this week that it has begun notifying hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans that their temporary permission to live and work in the United States has been revoked and that they should leave the country.

The termination notices are being sent by email to people who entered the country under the humanitarian parole program for the four countries, officials said on Thursday.

Since October 2022, about 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela were allowed to enter the U.S. under the program created by the Biden administration. They arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the U.S.

DHS said that the letters informed people that both their temporary legal status and their work permit was revoked “effective immediately.” It encouraged any person living illegally in the U.S. to leave using a mobile application called CBP Home and said that individuals will receive travel assistance and $1,000 upon arrival at their home country.

The department did not provide details on how the U.S. government will find or contact the people once they leave or how they will receive the money.

It is unknown how many Marylanders will be affected by the revocation as the government does not provide that type of data by geography, according to immigration advocacy groups.

Garry Bien-Aime, executive director of Komite Ayiti, a Haitian-led nonprofit focusing on education in the Baltimore area for nearly a decade, said he was disappointed by the revocation.

“It is a policy of xenophobia, racism and white supremacy,” Bien-Aime said.

There are roughly 10,000 Haitians in Maryland, according to Bien-Aime, with large population of migrant workers in and around Salisbury. In the last few years, the Baltimore region has seen the arrival of 2.500 Haitians who would be affected by this policy, he added.

Rescinding legal protections from hundreds of thousands of people who entered this country through proper channels is a deeply destabilizing decision, said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Baltimore-based Global Refuge, which helps immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

“These are people who played by the rules,” Vignarajah said in a statement. “Tearing up that social contract overnight does nothing to advance our national security or humanitarian leadership.”

Many of those immigrants with legal immigration protection are employed in “critical sectors” of the U.S. economy, from construction to elder care, helping to fill labor shortages in both rural and urban areas, she said.

Trump promised during his presidential campaign to end what he called the “broad abuse” of humanitarian parole, a long-standing legal tool presidents have used to allow people from countries in which there is war or political instability to enter and temporarily live in the U.S.

Trump promised to deport millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally, and as president he has also been ending legal pathways created for immigrants coming to the U.S. to stay and work.

His decision to end the parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans was challenged in the courts, but the Supreme Court last month permitted the administration to revoke those temporary legal protections.