Supreme court rules trump can restart deportation of more than 530k migrants from biden-era ‘parole’ program

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Trump administration can restart deportations of up to 530,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants who entered the US as

part of a controversial “humanitarian parole” program under former President Joe Biden. Seven of the high court’s justices granted the stay of a Boston federal court ruling that had halted

the removals of the migrants, who had been granted work permits to stay up to two years. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored a dissenting opinion, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor joining

her. “The Court has plainly botched this assessment today,” Jackson seethed. “It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm.” The Biden-appointed justice

also warned of “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.” EXPLORE MORE “Even if the Government is likely to win on the merits, in our legal system, success takes time and the stay standards require more than anticipated victory,” she

added, saying the majority was allowing the Trump admin “to inflict maximum predecision damage.” Boston US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, had

blocked Trump from the unilateral move, saying the migrants in the so-called “CHNV program” were entitled to a case-by-case review. The Boston-based US First Circuit Court of Appeals

declined to intervene. Around half a dozen migrants who entered the US via the parole program initiated the suit and have been represented by the Justice Action Center and other immigration

advocacy groups. Jackson claimed in her dissent that the foreigners faced the “irreparable harm” of family separation and other dangers in returning to their native countries — or “arrest

and detention” by the feds. Border hawks have previously argued that Biden shouldn’t have paroled the migrants en masse into the US without a vote of Congress or case-by-case consideration.

“The CHNV program was established without congressional authorization and in violation of statutory requirements that parole be granted only on a case-by-case basis for explicit national

interest or humanitarian purposes,” said Dan Stein, the president of the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform, last August. Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary

Kristi Noem to terminate the parole program pursuant to an executive order he signed on his first day in the Oval Office. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin has

referred to the program as an “abuse” of the parole system. “If aliens do not leave the country, they will be tracked down and face additional financial penalty — and potentially criminal,”

she said in March. Biden’s DHS let in up to 30,000 migrants per month from Latin American countries, starting with Venezuelans in October 2022. In January 2023, Cubans, Haitians, and

Nicaraguans were added to the program. Each applicant needed to pass a vetting process, have a domestic sponsor, and not be flagged previously for trying to enter the US illegally The cities

of Miami and Ft Lauderdale in Florida, as well as New York City, took in the most parolees. Around 110,240 Cubans, 211,040 Haitians, 93,080 Nicaraguans, and 117,320 Venezuelans were

ultimately granted temporary legal status in the US as a result — despite a pause in mid-2024 following allegations of fraud. A Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) subagency report

revealed that some of the thousands of sponsors listed to receive the migrants were putting down fake Social Security numbers and phone numbers — while others had passed away. FAIR had

obtained a copy of that report and released it to highlight the fraud, prompting a few weeks’ pause of the program during the height of the 2024 election. Congressional Republicans like

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee claimed the program was “clearly flawed” from the start and didn’t have “adequate safeguards in place to prevent

exploitation by sponsors.”