Cancel legal status

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to cancel legal status for half-million immigrants

The administration can now cancel a Biden-era humanitarian program that allowed immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to live and work in the U.S. legally.

By Josh Gerstein

The Supreme Court has given the Trump administration the go-ahead to begin deporting about a half million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who entered the U.S. legally under “humanitarian parole” programs implemented during the Biden administration.

The high court’s one-paragraph order — which contained no explanation of the court’s reasoning — lifts an earlier ruling from a district judge who had blocked the administration’s mass cancellation of the programs.

The immigrants who entered through the programs will now lose their permits to work in the U.S. and are at risk of imminent deportation, although many are expected to apply for asylum or similar protections.

Two Democratic-appointed justices — Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.

The majority’s decision to allow the administration to cancel the programs while legal challenges were still pending will “facilitate needless human suffering” and will unleash “devastation” on the affected immigrants, Jackson wrote in an eight-page dissent joined by Sotomayor.

In March, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked the legal status of immigrants in the so-called CHNV parole programs and gave participants 30 days to leave the U.S. However, a federal judge in Boston blocked Noem’s move the following month, concluding that “en masse” termination of the groups’ immigration status was likely illegal and that officials could only end individuals’ parole grants early on a case-by-case basis.

The high court’s decision could result in a total of about one million immigrants losing their legal status because the Trump administration may take the ruling as a green light to move quickly to end similar parole programs for citizens of Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries.