Washington DC - The on Friday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke – for now – the legal status of hundreds of thousands of from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The Supreme Court on Friday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke – for now – the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants. © REUTERS
The decision puts some 532,000 people who came to the US under a "parole" program launched by former President at risk of deportation.
The parole program allowed entry into the US for two years for up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries, which have grim human rights records.
But as President takes a hard line on immigration, his administration has moved to overturn those protections in legal battles that reached all the way to the Supreme Court earlier this month.
The government had to lift a lower court order barring them from ending the humanitarian protections.
The conservative-dominated court – whose order was unsigned and provided no reasoning – granted the administration a stay on that order, while legal battles continue.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, warning of the "devastating consequences" of upending the "lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending," according to the document.
"The Court has plainly botched this assessment today," they wrote.
President Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants. © Andrew Harnik / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
The migrants "now face two unbearable options. On the one hand, they could elect to leave the United States and, thereby, confront 'dangers in their native countries,' experience destructive 'family separation,'" and possibly forfeit any chance of remedy based on their claims, they wrote.
"On the other, they could remain in the United States ... and risk imminent removal at the hands of Government agents, along with its serious attendant consequences."
Lower courts, which from revoking the migrants' status, had argued that it was acting on a flawed interpretation of immigration law.
Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants.
Among other measures, he to fly hundreds of Venezuelans whom the administration has accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
