The Board of Immigration Appeals has reversed fourteen years of settled practice on advance parole travel. In Matter of Delcarmen-Lara, 29 I&N Dec. 830 (BIA 2026), decided Aug. 13, 2026, the Board held that leaving the United States on a grant of advance parole is a “departure” for purposes of INA § 212(a)(9)(B)(i)(II) — the provision that triggers the three- and ten-year unlawful presence bars.
That overrules Matter of Arrabally and Yerrabelly, 25 I&N Dec. 771 (BIA 2012), which had held the opposite: that a temporary trip abroad under advance parole was qualitatively different from an ordinary departure and therefore did not set off the unlawful presence bars. Arrabally had become one of the most relied-upon protections in adjustment-of-status practice. Under it, someone who had accrued unlawful presence, later obtained a pending adjustment application and advance parole, and then traveled abroad could return and complete their green card case without the bar attaching.
Under the new rule, that same trip can trigger inadmissibility. An applicant who accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence before obtaining their current status faces the three-year bar on departure; more than one year of unlawful presence exposes them to the ten-year bar. Because a person subject to the bar is inadmissible, the bar can block the adjustment application the advance parole was meant to protect in the first place. The people most exposed are adjustment applicants with prior unlawful presence — a group that prominently includes DACA recipients and people with Temporary Protected Status history, many of whom originally entered without inspection and have relied on advance parole travel as their path to a lawful entry.
One important limit: the Board conducted a retroactivity analysis and applied the decision prospectively only. That preserves an argument that advance parole trips taken before the decision should not automatically be judged under the new interpretation. It does not, however, offer any comfort to someone planning a trip now.
The practical guidance from immigration practitioners since the decision has been consistent and blunt: if you have any period of prior unlawful presence and you are holding an advance parole document, do not travel without first getting case-specific legal advice. Holding a valid advance parole document is no longer, by itself, assurance that a trip abroad is safe. Applicants who have maintained lawful status throughout — for example, those who moved through H-1B or F-1 status without a gap — do not accrue unlawful presence and are in a different position, but the line between “no unlawful presence” and “some unlawful presence” is exactly the kind of question worth confirming before booking a flight rather than after landing.
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Source: Reddit r/USCIS