The BIA Just Changed What Travel on Advance Parole Means. If You Have Unlawful Presence, Read This Before You Leave.

For more than a decade, one rule made international travel possible for a large number of people with pending green card applications. On August 13, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals changed it.

The change is narrow in description and large in consequence, and anyone holding an advance parole document should understand it before booking travel.

What the old rule was

Under immigration law, a person who has accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence in the United States and then departs can be barred from returning for three years. More than a year of unlawful presence carries a ten-year bar. The bar is triggered by the departure itself.

In 2012, in a decision called Matter of Arrabally and Yerrabelly, the Board held that leaving the United States on a grant of advance parole was not a “departure” for purposes of that bar. That holding is why advance parole became something people could actually use. Someone with a pending adjustment of status application who had accrued unlawful presence could travel for a family emergency, a funeral, or a business obligation and return without triggering a multi-year bar on their own case.

What changed

In Matter of Delcarmen-Lara, decided August 13, 2026, the Board overruled Arrabally and held that a departure on advance parole is a departure within the meaning of the unlawful presence bar.

Stated plainly: under the Board's new holding, a person who has accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence and then leaves the country on advance parole may trigger the three- or ten-year bar by doing so — even though they hold a document that permits them to return.

The decision applies going forward

One important limit. The Board said it would apply the new holding prospectively, and it declined to decide whether the travel in the case before it counted as a departure. So this is a rule about travel from the decision forward, not a reopening of trips already taken.

That limit is real, but it is not a reason for comfort about future travel. It is the reason this article exists: the risk attaches to decisions people are making right now.

Why this is unusually consequential

Most changes in immigration law can be litigated, appealed, or waived. This one is different in an important way — the harm happens at the airport, and it happens to the person's own pending case.

Advance parole is held by people in the middle of something: adjustment of status applicants, people with Temporary Protected Status who obtained travel authorization, DACA recipients with approved travel documents. Many of them accrued unlawful presence years ago, before the case that is now pending was filed. That history does not show up on the travel document. It shows up when they come back.

There is no version of this where someone can undo the trip.

What this does not say

The decision does not say that advance parole is invalid, that nobody should ever travel, or that everyone with a pending application has an unlawful presence problem. Plenty of people holding advance parole never accrued unlawful presence at all — for example, because they were in a lawful status the entire time, or because time in certain categories did not count toward it. For those people, the bar is not triggered because there is nothing to trigger it.

The decision also does not change the waivers and exceptions that exist in the law. It changes whether the bar is triggered in the first place.

The problem is that whether a particular person has accrued unlawful presence — and how much — is a technical question that people routinely get wrong about their own history.

Before you travel on advance parole

If you hold advance parole and are considering leaving the United States, the question to answer first is not whether your document is valid. It is whether you have accrued unlawful presence, how much, and what leaving would now mean for your pending case.

That analysis depends on your entry date, your status history, any prior filings, and the specifics of the case now pending. It is not something to estimate from memory, and it is not something this article can answer for anyone.

A case-specific consultation with an immigration attorney — before travel is booked, not after — is the reliable way to understand the risk.

This article is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Whether the unlawful presence bar applies to any individual depends on facts specific to that person, and this area of law is developing. Consult a qualified immigration attorney before making travel decisions. This website is attorney advertising.