Present disclosure provides techniques for migrating integrated access and backhaul (IAB) nodes from the source centralized unit (CU) to a target IAB-donor-CU of a base station. Features of the present disclosure achieve such migration by configuring the IAB distributed unit (IAB-DU)to establish F1-connection (F1-C) with the target IAB-donor-CU via the source path before the user equipment (UE) context transfer occurs. To this end, the source IAB-donor-CU may initiate an F1-C establishment between IAB-node DU and target IAB-donor-CU. The source IAB-donor-CU may do so by acting or presenting as an IAB-node-DU proxy to the target IAB-donor-CU. At the same time, the source IAB-donor-CU may act or present as a target-IAB-donor-CU proxy to the IAB-node-DU. Thus, in some cases, the source IAB-donor-CU may present as both the IAB-node-DU proxy (to the target IAB-donor-CU) and as a target-IAB-donor-CU proxy (to the IAB-node-DU).