The Trump administration was handed a win by the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, after it issued a stay on a lower court’s ruling that blocked President Donald Trump from furthering his immigration agenda by revoking parole status to around 500,000 migrants.
According to Fox News, the migrants come from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and were given Temporary Protected Status (TPS) by the Biden administration, however, the Trump administration wants to reel back these protections, which allows these individuals to live and work in the U.S. legally.
While the conservative justices did not provide an explanation for the ruling, liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a scathing dissent.
Jackson said the court “plainly botched” the assessment and did not weigh 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.”
“While it is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage, court-ordered stays exist to minimize — not maximize — harm to litigating parties,” Jackson added.
In February, the Trump administration overturned the parole program when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to revoke protections for a particular group of Venezuelan nationals, asserting that maintaining them was not in the national interest.
Earlier this month, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer urged the justices to permit the administration to move forward with its decision to revoke migrant status. He argued that U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had overstepped his authority by interfering with the executive branch’s control over immigration policy.
“The district court’s reasoning is untenable,” Sauer said, adding the program “implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive, and foreign-policy-laden judgments of the Executive Branch regarding immigration policy.”
This update follows the Supreme Court’s recent decision to permit the Trump administration to revoke the protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan migrants earlier this month, paving the way for their removal.
