Justices Say Trump Can Revoke Legal Protections for 500K+ Immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court held Friday that the Trump administration can revoke temporary legal protections bestowed by President Biden on more than 500,000 immigrants from four Latin American and Caribbean countries.

As is their custom in cases where an emergency action has been requested of the court, the judges in the majority did not explain the rationale for their decision.

However, in a scathing dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said their colleagues had “plainly botched” their assessment of the situation before them.

In doing so, she wrote, they ignored the “devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens” while legal challenges continue to play out in court.

The so-called “CHNV programs” subject to the ruling were created by the Biden administration in 2023 to relieve pressure at the United States’ southern border by allowing certain individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to be considered for a two-year stay in the United States while their individual claims for entry were adjudicated.

Under U.S. immigration law, the “parole” granted under the CHNV programs gives individuals permission to stay in the United States for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.

In his first hours back in office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders terminating “all categorical parole programs,” and specifically CHNV, as contrary to his policies.

On March 25, the Trump administration followed up on that directive by publishing a notice in the federal register that formally ended the CHNV programs effective April 24, 2025.

Though the notice conceded the program led to reductions in illegal entries into the United States, it went on to explain that the Trump administration opposes all migration by CHNV nationals, and that the White House is actively negotiating with other countries to facilitate their deportation.

Prior to Friday, lower courts had rejected the administration’s attempt to end the two-year parole the programs granted to 532,000 migrants, contending that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security failed to conduct the necessary case-by-case review.

Brown Jackson thought her colleagues on the high court should adopt the same standard or at least stick to its historic practices when considering just such a case.

“When this court evaluates whether or not to stay a lower court’s order, the factors we apply are well established,” Brown Jackson wrote.“The applicant must show a fair prospect that we will grant certiorari and reverse, that the merits favor them, that irreparable harm will befall them should we deny the stay, and, in close cases, that the equities and public interest are on their side.

“The court has plainly botched this assessment today,” she said.

“It requires next to nothing from the government with respect to irreparable harm.And it 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,” she continued.

“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,” Brown Jackson wrote. “I would have denied the government’s application because its harm-related showing is patently insufficient.

“The balance of the equities also weighs heavily in respondents’ favor. While it is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum pre-decision damage, court-ordered stays exist to minimize — not maximize — harm to litigating parties,” she said.

The justice continued: “With the stakes as high as they are in this case, measured in terms of real harm to real people, one might reasonably expect the government to step up to equity’s scale with a mountain of harm-related arguments, bolstered by evidence.

“The government bears the burden of showing why it, or the public, will be irreparably injured should it be prevented from exercising its policy preferences now — i.e., while the lawfulness of this agency action is being litigated.”

Later, Brown Jackson noted that the Supreme Court has repeatedly denied similar requests from federal agencies in recent years, “unmoved by the bald contention that the government is irreparably harmed whenever its ‘substantial interest in carrying out the president’s policies’” is stymied.

“The government says no more than that today,” she said. “Yet, somehow, 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 dissenting courts decide their legal claims.

“Even assuming a likelihood that the law permits the government to terminate parole grants in this fashion, I would let the courts decide that highly consequential legal issue first — consistent with standard stay practices and, especially, the necessary harm-centered focus. Instead, the court allows the government to do what it wants to do regardless, rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process,” she said.

Friday’s decision marks the second time the justices have sided with the administration’s efforts to rescind a group of migrants’ temporary legal status.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and on X @DanMcCue