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Haitian parole migrant charged with Walmart murder entered US legally under Biden program

DHS says status revoked in 2025, parole channel admitted him without congressional vote

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Haitian national charged with first-degree murder of estranged wife Haitian national charged with first-degree murder of estranged wife foxnews.com
Destino Jean-Louis, 23, Destino Jean-Louis, 23, foxnews.com
arrest-of-destino-jean-louis arrest-of-destino-jean-louis foxnews.com
U.S. Marshals arrest Destino Jean Louis in Philadelphia. U.S. Marshals arrest Destino Jean Louis in Philadelphia. foxnews.com

A 23-year-old Haitian national charged with first-degree murder in Pennsylvania entered the United States legally through the Biden administration's CHNV parole program, according to Department of Homeland Security sources cited by Fox News.

Destino Jean-Louis is charged with the fatal shooting of Latosha Ann Cooper, 45, outside a Walmart in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, on October 21. Court documents allege a grim sequence: the two met while working at the same Walmart in 2024, married after Cooper offered to help him obtain a green card, and the arrangement collapsed when his application was denied in July. Cooper withdrew from the process and cut off contact. Investigators say Jean-Louis then repeatedly asked store employees for her work schedule, and cellphone records place him near the Walmart on several nights before a masked man ran up and shot Cooper as she left her night shift. He is held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and denies being present at the killing.

The entry route is the story's structural fact. Jean-Louis arrived at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on November 24, 2023, under the CHNV program — a parole scheme for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela that admitted hundreds of thousands by executive discretion, with no congressional authorization and no visa category created by Congress. DHS says his legal status was revoked on June 12, 2025, and ICE arrested him in Philadelphia on October 23, transferring him to local custody three days later.

The program's design put the costs of its failures on people the program never had to consult. A parole admission requires no sponsor vetting beyond a form, no showing of skills, no immigrant's bond — only an administration's decision that the border is wherever the plane lands. Montgomery County prosecutors now hold a first-degree murder case; the officials who built the channel hold nothing.

The CHNV program was wound down by the current administration, but its alumni remain, and the green-card marriage that allegedly ended in a parking-lot ambush began with an arrival stamp an airport in Florida gave him.