Supreme Court lets Trump end humanitarian parole for 500,000 people from 4 countries

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST WASHINGTON AP The Supreme Court on Friday again cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly million The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than asylum seekers from four countries Cuba Haiti Nicaragua and Venezuela The court has also allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about Venezuelan expatriates in another affair Republican President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to deport millions of people and in office has sought to dismantle Biden administration polices that created means for newcomers to live legally in the U S Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio with legal status under the humanitarian parole activity were abducting and eating pets during his only debate with President Joe Biden according to court documents His administration filed an urgency appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal judge in Boston blocked the administration s push to end the effort Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent that the effect of the court s order is to have the lives of half a million immigrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal contends Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent Jackson echoed what U S District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in ruling that ending the legal protections early would leave people with a stark choice flee the country or exposure losing everything Talwani an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama discovered that revocations of parole can be done but on a case-by-case basis Her ruling came in mid-April shortly before permits were due to be canceled An appeals court refused to lift her order The Supreme Court s order is not a final ruling but it means the protections will not be in place while the episode proceeds It now returns to the st U S Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston The Justice Department argues that the protections were inevitably meant to be temporary and the Department of Homeland Precaution has the power to revoke them without court interference The administration says Biden granted the parole en masse and the law doesn t require ending it on an individual basis Taking on each affair individually would be a gargantuan task and slow the administration s efforts to press for their removal Solicitor General D John Sauer argued Biden used humanitarian parole more than any other president employing a special presidential authority in effect since Beneficiaries included the people who have come to the United States with financial sponsors since late leaving home countries fraught with instability dangers and deprivations as attorneys for the expatriates stated They had to fly to the U S at their own expense and have a financial sponsor to qualify for the designation which lasts for two years The Trump administration s decision was the first-ever mass revocation of humanitarian parole attorneys for the transients announced They called the Trump administration s moves the largest mass illegalization event in modern American history The episode is the latest in a string of crisis appeals the administration has made to the Supreme Court a great number of of them related to immigration The court has sided against Trump in other cases including slowing his efforts to swiftly deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act