For fourteen years, one piece of case law quietly made international travel possible for hundreds of thousands of people who, on paper, shouldn't have been able to leave the US and come back at all. As of August 13, 2026, that protection is gone. Don't Travel on Advance Parole Yet: The BIA Just Erased a 14-Year Protection What Changed The Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedential decision, Matter of Delcarmen-Lara, holding that traveling outside the United States und

For fourteen years, a single legal precedent let hundreds of thousands of people leave the United States for a parent's funeral, a family wedding, or a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and come home without jeopardizing their path to a green card. On August 13, 2026, that precedent was overruled. If you have a pending adjustment of status application, DACA, or TPS, and you've ever accrued unlawful presence, the calculus around international travel just changed — and most people affec