The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can revoke protected status for more than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from deportations.
The unsigned decision was not a final ruling on the case, but it will allow the Trump administration to continue its mass deportation efforts as an appeal of the president’s order plays out in the courts, The New York Times reported. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor signed onto a written dissent, arguing that the court’s decision would have “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.”
The ruling centers on former President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program that allowed migrants from certain countries facing instability to enter the United States and quickly receive work authorization. On day one in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the end of the migrant parole program, and the Department of Homeland Security responded by moving to terminate the program in March, Reuters reported.
Biden opened up the United States to thousands of Venezuelans in 2022 and then to Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans in 2023. After Trump moved to revoke the protected status for these migrants, lawyers representing many of the migrants sued, arguing that Trump’s “actions are not only illegal, but shockingly callous.” Biden’s parole program also extended to around 240,000 Ukrainians, but the Trump administration has not yet sought to revoke protected status for the Ukrainians fleeing the war.
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The Trump administration’s move to terminate the parole program was paused by a federal judge in Massachusetts in March, and that pause was upheld by an appeals court earlier this month. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in a May 8 emergency application to the Supreme Court that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has “broad discretion over categories of immigration determinations” and has the power to revoke the protected status recognized under Biden’s parole program, according to the Times.
Sauer wrote that the district court upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry, vitiating core Executive Branch prerogatives, and undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election.”
The Supreme Court’s Friday decision is its second ruling this month that allows Trump to seek the removal of migrants from the United States as an appeals process plays out. On May 19, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the Trump administration can remove Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for around 350,000 Venezuelan migrants who were allowed to remain in the United States under the Biden administration.