The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of more than 500,000 immigrants that was granted by the Biden administration, NBC News reported.
The court granted an emergency application filed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that ends the Biden program that gave 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela permission to temporarily live and work in the United States, the news agency said.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, according to a brief order.
Jackson wrote that the court had failed to take into account "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 administration was contesting a ruling by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who said the administration could not sweep each person’s status away without an individualized determination. That decision is now on hold while litigation continues, NBC said.
Starting in 2022, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas granted what is called parole for two years to people from the affected countries in part to alleviate the surge arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The policy, known as the CHNV parole programs, allowed people who passed a security check and who had a sponsor in the United States who could provide housing, to enter the country and stay.
The Department of Homeland Security said in October 2024 that each person's parole would not be extended once their two-year approval period expired.
Noem's move to unwind the Biden action was challenged in court by individuals who would be affected, as well as the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant rights group.
“This ruling will have devastating consequences for hundreds of thousands of families and will resonate in our workplaces, as industries abruptly lose their workers," Murad Awawdeh, president and chief executive officer of the New York Immigration Coalition said in a statement. "These individuals did everything right by following the procedures that were set out for them to escape extreme hardship and instability in their home countries. Now, at a moment’s notice, they’ve had their lives and their livelihoods upended for no other reason than one administration’s desire to meet some arbitrary and outrageous deportation agenda.
In a separate ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday also revoked the Temporary Protected Status program for 350,000 Venezuelans, NBC reported.
