Supreme Court Clears Trump to Strip 500K Migrants of Legal Status

The Supreme Court let the Trump administration immediately strip the legal right to temporarily live and work in the US from as many as half a million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Over two dissents, the high court cleared the Department of Homeland Security to end so-called parole programs that gave migrants from those four countries temporary legal status. The justices put on hold a federal trial court order that had blocked the cancellation while litigation went forward.

The order marks the second time in less than two weeks the justices have opened hundreds of thousands of migrants to possible deportation. It follows the court’s May 19 order letting DHS end legal protections for 350,000 Venezuelans under a different program. The decisions are bolstering Trump administration efforts to aggressively evict migrants — including some people who came to the US legally. 

As is often the case with emergency orders, the court gave no explanation.

Bloomberg's Greg Stohr reports.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying the court “undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”

It’s not clear how quickly the government can or will move to deport people in the group. The Trump administration indicated in court filings it wants to use an expedited removal process that federal immigration law permits for some people who have been in the US for less than two years.

“I cannot overstate how devastating this is,” said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, which is helping to challenge the revocation. “The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to unleash widespread chaos, not just for our clients and class members, but for their families, their workplaces, and their communities.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been told to make at least 3,000 arrests a day in a bid to reach at least 1 million immigrant arrests a year. They have deported roughly 62,000 people. The administration has also launched a self-deportation campaign, offering to help migrants leave the US and pay them a small stipend.

DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the Supreme Court decision.
The parole clash affects people who entered the country during Joe Biden’s presidency after securing a US sponsor and getting government approval. The Biden administration expanded its use of parole — a tool designed to admit people temporarily for humanitarian or public-interest reasons — by setting up special processes targeting those four countries. 

Roughly 532,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela entered the US under the Biden programs, typically for a two-year period. It’s unclear how many remain in the country under that status.

In blocking Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from revoking the programs, US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston said federal immigration law appears to require that parole be revoked on a case-by-case basis, not categorically.

US Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the Trump administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, told the justices that making individualized determinations would be a “colossal undertaking.” 

Talwani’s order “blocks the executive branch from exercising its discretionary authority over a key aspect of the nation’s immigration and foreign policy and thwarts Congress’s express vesting of that decision in the secretary, not courts,” Sauer argued.

Lawyers for a group of parole beneficiaries urged the Supreme Court to reject the request. Noem must “apply the law correctly before revoking their parole and upending their lives and causing mass disruption to their families, employers, and communities,” they argued.

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