The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to currently terminate the migrant program adopted during the Biden era, writes The New York Times. The administration appealed to the court to allow it to end protection from deportation for more than 500,000 people facing serious humanitarian crises in their countries.
In an instant, more than half a million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela became illegal, as this program allowed them to temporarily live and work in the USA.
Only two judges — Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor — voted against canceling the program and stated that the decision endangers hundreds of thousands of people. They wrote in a special opinion that the ruling will have "devastating consequences, allowing the government to drastically change the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million non-citizens while their legal claims are under consideration."
The court's decision to side with the Trump administration, although a temporary ruling at an early stage of litigation, signals that the majority of judges believe the administration is likely to win the case.
Judge Jackson pointed this out in her special opinion when she wrote that the Supreme Court should have maintained the lower court's suspension, allowing people to retain their immigration status for now, "even if the government is likely to win on the merits of the case."
The decision made on Friday concerned the expansion by former President Joe Biden of a legal immigration mechanism that allows migrants from unstable countries to enter the United States and quickly obtain work permits, provided they have a private sponsor who takes responsibility for them. In April 2022, the Biden administration announced a similar humanitarian program for Ukrainians. Then, at the end of 2022, they introduced a program for Venezuelans, and in January 2023 — for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. Amid a stalemate in Congress on immigration and a sharp increase in border crossings, these programs paved the way for legal entry into the country for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from these countries. Officials hoped these programs would encourage immigrants to fly to the United States and apply for entry in an organized manner, instead of traveling north on foot and illegally crossing the border.
"The Supreme Court has effectively given the green light to deport about half a million people, which is the largest de-legalization in modern history," said Karen Tamlin, founder and director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights advocacy group.
President Trump, on his first day back in office, decided to end humanitarian parole programs for citizens of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti. Migrant lawyers filed a lawsuit claiming that the termination of humanitarian and other immigration programs was "unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious."
A federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily halted the administration's cancellation of the program in April, finding that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not have the authority to cancel the program for all 532,000 people without individual consideration of each case. On May 5, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's temporary decision to suspend the administration's action, finding that Noem did not provide "compelling evidence" that her "categorical termination" of programs for all migrants would withstand legal challenge.
So far, the Trump administration has not attempted to revoke the status of 240,000 Ukrainians who received humanitarian permission to stay, although it has suspended the processing of new applications under this program.
Immigrant lawyers believe that "all of them have complied with US government laws and regulations and are here to reunite with family and/or escape, even temporarily, from instability, dangers, and hardships in their home countries."