The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration for now to revoke a parole status for more than 500,000 immigrants in the country as legal challenges to the move proceed through lower courts.
The brief order does not explain why the justices set aside a federal district court order that prevented the Trump administration from categorically revoking the status of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were allowed to remain and work in the United States for up to two years under a Biden-era initiative.
The Trump administration argued in its emergency application to the Supreme Court that the lower court judge did not have authority to require a case-by-case review to cut short the previously granted parole.
The government argued that Congress never gave the courts authority to review the case-by-case determinations of parole status, which the Biden administration granted on a widespread basis and the Trump administration sought to revoke through a similar process.
“In doing so, the district court engaged in the very review Congress prohibited—needlessly upending 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 application stated.
The Biden administration granted parole status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the countries facing violence, war and other unrest in their home countries so they could stay in the United States for up to two years while their applications for more permanent residency were adjudicated. The migrants were required to pay for their entry into the United States; they also needed to have a U.S.-based sponsor and pass vetting.
Trump sought to roll back parole status in a first-day executive order on immigration that sought to terminate “categorical parole status,” among other measures. Following the executive order, the administration made plans to terminate parole status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants in April, regardless of when their parole would otherwise end.
That effort faced numerous lawsuits nationwide, including the one involved in Friday’s order on behalf of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela in the so-called CHNV parole programs.
Those immigrants convinced Judge Indira Talwani for the District of Massachusetts that the broad revocation of parole status violated federal law that required case-by-case review. The Trump administration appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit and then asked the justices to step in when the appellate court refused.
Because Friday’s order was unexplained, it wasn’t immediately clear how many justices joined the majority decision. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a dissent from Friday’s order, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which criticized the majority for giving too much leeway to the Trump administration’s argument.
Jackson argued that the courts should decide all the relevant legal issues first, rather than potentially allowing the government to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who could still win their cases.
“Instead, the Court allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless, rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process,” Jackson said.
Multiple lawsuits are pending against the administration’s decision to suspend parole for immigrants from countries worldwide. On Wednesday, the same federal judge, Talwani, required the Trump administration to resume processing work permits for immigrants from Afghanistan, Ukraine and other countries who are in the United States on parole.
Friday’s order is the latest from more than a dozen emergency cases that reached the high court after judges halted Trump administration actions. The case is Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, et al., v. Svitlana Doe, et al.
The date that Judge Indira Talwani issued an order regarding work permits for immigrants has been corrected.
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