The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant victory Friday, allowing it to suspend a humanitarian parole program that permitted approximately 530,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to temporarily live and work in the United States.
The unsigned order marks the second time this month the high court has sided with Trump’s efforts to revoke temporary legal status for immigrants. The court provided no reasoning for its decision, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
While the emergency ruling is not final and the underlying case will continue in lower courts, the decision enables the administration to expedite deportations for hundreds of thousands of migrants who previously benefited from the Biden-era program. An unknown number may have applied for other forms of immigration relief.
“I cannot overstate how devastating this is,” said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, which represented the migrants. “The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to unleash widespread chaos, not just for our clients and class members, but for their families, their workplaces, and their communities.”
Justice Jackson, writing for the dissent, accused the majority of having “plainly botched” the formula for determining whether to lift a lower court ruling. She argued the decision “undervalues 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.”
“The court has now apparently determined that the equity balance weighs in the government’s favor, and, I suppose, that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims,” Jackson wrote.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, celebrated the ruling, telling CNN that the administration is pleased these migrants “can now be deported because the Supreme Court justly stepped in and stopped these crazy lower court injunctions.”
The parole program, which has roots dating back to the Eisenhower administration, allows the executive branch to grant temporary entry to certain migrants for humanitarian reasons. The Biden administration announced in 2023 it would grant parole to qualified migrants from the four countries who submitted to review by authorities rather than entering illegally. Applicants were required to have an American sponsor and pass security vetting.
Trump signed an order on his first day in office seeking to end the program. The central legal question is whether Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem can revoke parole status for all migrants immediately or must conduct individual case reviews.
The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that terminating the program was one of its “most consequential immigration policy decisions,” arguing that lower court orders blocking the policy upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry.”
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani had temporarily blocked the administration from ending the program wholesale, ruling it could still terminate parole for individuals after case-by-case review. A federal appeals court in Boston declined to overturn her order earlier this month.
The case represents one of more than a dozen emergency appeals reaching the Supreme Court since Trump took office in January, with several involving immigration issues. The court heard arguments May 15 about the president’s efforts to end birthright citizenship and has dealt with multiple cases involving deportation procedures.
According to CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck, the ruling dramatically increases the number of migrants from the four countries subject to removal, raising stakes for another pending emergency case about whether the government can remove migrants to countries other than their homeland without meaningful opportunity to contest their removal.
The decision comes as the Trump administration continues its aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, despite the president’s continued criticism of the federal judiciary. The Supreme Court has shown a pattern of siding with the administration on immigration matters while legal challenges work through lower courts.
