Supreme Court allows Trump to suspend deportation protections for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to suspend a Biden-era parole program that allowed a half million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to temporarily live and work in the United States.

It was the second time this month that the high court sided with Trump’s efforts to revoke temporary legal status for immigrants. The Supreme Court previously cleared the way for the administration to revoke another temporary program that provided work permits to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.

The court’s brief order was not signed. Two liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented from the decision.

Though the emergency decision from the Supreme Court is not final – the underlying legal case will continue in lower courts – the order will allow the administration to expedite deportations for those who had previously benefited from the program.

Parole program dates to Eisenhower era

Federal immigration law since the 1950s has allowed an administration to “parole” certain migrants arriving at the border for humanitarian and other reasons. The Eisenhower administration, for instance, paroled tens of thousands of people fleeing Hungary during a Soviet crackdown after World War II. Paroled migrants may legally live and work in the country typically for two years, though their status is temporary.

The Biden administration announced in 2023 that it would grant parole to qualified migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who submitted to review by authorities rather than attempting to enter the country illegally. Applicants were required to have an American sponsor and clear security vetting. Trump signed an order on his first day in office seeking to unilaterally end the program.

No one disputes that, under federal law, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has broad authority to grant or revoke parole status. The question is whether the department may revoke the status for all migrants immediately with the stroke of a pen, or whether the agency must conduct a case-by-case review of each migrant. Though the two sides dispute the facts, the Biden administration appears to have conducted at least some individual review of each migrant before granting parole.

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that its decision to terminate parole status for the migrants at issue was one of the “most consequential immigration policy decisions” it has made. Lower court orders temporarily blocking its policy, the administration said, 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.”

After a group of migrants who benefited from the program sued, US District Judge Indira Talwani temporarily blocked the administration from carrying out its effort to end the program wholesale. The administration, she said, could still end parole for individuals after a case-by-case review.  Former President Barack Obama nominated Talwani to the bench in 2013.

A federal appeals court in Boston declined to block Talwani’s temporary order on May 5. The order from a panel of three judges – two appointees of former President Joe Biden and a third appointed by former President Barack Obama – expressed skepticism that Noem had the power to categorically end the parole program.

The parole program was among more than a dozen emergency appeals that have reached the Supreme Court since Trump took office in January, including several that involve immigration. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on May 15 about the president’s efforts to end birthright citizenship – and the power of lower courts to temporarily block him from doing so.

The court required the administration to “facilitate” the return of a Salvadoran national mistakenly deported to El Salvador earlier this year. The court has also repeatedly barred the administration – for now – from rapidly deporting a group of Venezuelans in northern Texas under a sweeping 18th century wartime authority.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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