Trump asks Supreme Court to end Biden-era humanitarian parole, threatening legal status of 500,000 migrants

The Trump administration has turned to the Supreme Court in a fresh effort to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. In an emergency filing on Thursday, the administration asked the justices to reverse a lower court’s order that blocked plans to cancel humanitarian parole for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

More than 500,000 migrants from these four countries currently live in the United States under temporary legal status. The Biden administration granted them two-year permits to live and work legally through a humanitarian parole programme launched in late 2022. The Trump administration claims this programme was unlawful and exceeded presidential authority.

Solicitor General John Sauer said a lower court ruling had wrongly interfered with the Department of Homeland Security’s discretion. “The district court has nullified one of the administration's most consequential immigration policy decisions,” Sauer wrote in the appeal.

That court decision came from Judge Indira Talwani, who said the Trump administration had misread the law. Her mid-April ruling prevented the government from cancelling the temporary permits just days before they were set to expire.

Judge Talwani, appointed by former president Barack Obama, noted the administration's actions did not follow proper legal procedures. Immigration advocates called the move to dismantle the parole programme “unprecedented.”