The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump can terminate the protected status of around 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela while an appeal of the president's order is still pending.
The Department of Homeland Security later Friday said that with the Supreme Court's decision, "DHS can once again start removing illegal aliens under the disastrous CHNV parole programs as the case progresses."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a scathing dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the majority of the Supreme Court "has plainly botched" its assessment in granting a stay of a lower court ruling that had blocked the terminations ordered by Trump on his first day back in the White House.
Until that order, the group of immigrants who had left their home countries because of conflicts there, or unsafe living or working conditions, were allowed to remain in the United States for up to two years as the result of parole program instituted by the Biden adminstration.
"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 sarcastically in her dissent.
She said that the Supreme Court's ruling, which did not explain the grounds for 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."
"While it is apparent that the Government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage, court-ordered stays exist to minimize — not maximize — harm to litigating parties," Jackson wrote.
The ruling comes nearly two weeks after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to revoke the status of nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. who are allowed to remain under the Temporary Status Program.