Seven of the high court’s justices granted the stay of a Boston federal court ruling that had halted the removals of the migrants, who had been granted work permits to stay up to two years.
Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson authored a dissenting opinion, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor joining her.
“The Court has plainly botched this assessment today,” Jackson seethed. “It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm.”
The Biden-appointed justice also warned of “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.”
“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,” she added, saying the majority was allowing the Trump admin “to inflict maximum predecision damage.”
Boston US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, had blocked Trump from the unilateral move, saying the migrants in the so-called “CHNV program” were entitled to a case-by-case review.
The Boston-based US First Circuit Court of Appeals declined to intervene.
Around half a dozen migrants who entered the US via the parole program initiated the suit and have been represented by the Justice Action Center and other immigration advocacy groups.
Jackson claimed in her dissent the foreigners faced the “irreparable harm” of family separation and other dangers in returning to their native countries — or “arrest and detention” by the feds.
Border hawks have previously argued that Biden shouldn’t have paroled the migrants en masse into the US without a vote of Congress or case-by-case consideration.
“The CHNV program was established without congressional authorization and in violation of statutory requirements that parole be granted only on a case-by-case basis for explicit national interest or humanitarian purposes,” said Dan Stein, the president of the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform, last August.
Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to terminate the parole program pursuant to an executive order he signed on his first day in the Oval Office.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin has referred to the program as an “abuse” of the parole system.
Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to terminate the parole program pursuant to an executive order he signed on his first day in the Oval Office.
“If aliens do not leave the country they will be tracked down and face additional financial penalty — and potentially criminal,” she said in March.
Biden’s DHS let in up to 30,000 migrants per month from the Latin American countries starting with Venezuelans in October 2022.
In January 2023, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans were added to the program.
Each applicant needed to pass a vetting process, have a domestic sponsor and not be flagged previously for trying to enter the US illegally
The cities of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale in Florida, as well as New York City, took in the most parolees.
Around 110,240 Cubans, 211,040 Haitians, 93,080 Nicaraguans and 117,320 Venezuelans were ultimately granted temporary legal status in the US as a result — despite a pause in mid-2024 following allegations of fraud.
A Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) subagency report revealed that some of the thousands of sponsors listed to receive the migrants were putting down fake Social Security numbers and phone numbers — while others had passed away.