WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from four countries, setting them up for potential deportation.
The emergency appeal asks the justices to halt a lower-court order keeping in place temporary legal status for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The Republican administration argues that the decision wrongly intrudes on the Department of Homeland Security’s authority.
“The district court has nullified one of the administration’s most consequential immigration policy decisions,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote.
The order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston blocked the Trump administration from putting an early end to the migrants’ temporary legal status. Her ruling in mid-April came shortly before their permits were due to be canceled, opening them up to removal from the country.
Talwani, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, said that people in the program faced the option of “fleeing the country” or staying and “risk losing everything.” She said the government’s explanation for ending the program was “based on an incorrect reading of the law.”
The Justice Department went to the Supreme Court after an appeals court refused to lift Talwani’s order.
Sauer argued that the judge was instead wrong on the law, including her finding that any revocations of parole must be made on a case-by-case basis. He argued that ending the program early allows the federal government to remove people from the country more quickly, in line with the Trump administration’s policy goals.
The case is the latest in a string of emergency appeals the administration has made to the Supreme Court, many of them related to immigration. The government asked the court to strip temporary legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans last week, and it remains locked in legal battles over its efforts to swiftly deport people accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally. His administration has also sought to dismantle policies from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that created new ways for people to live legally in the U.S., generally for two years with work authorization.
Biden used humanitarian parole more than any other president, employing a special presidential authority in effect since 1952. Beneficiaries included more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who flew to the United States with financial sponsors on two-year permits since late 2022, with authorization to work.
Advocates have called the Trump administration’s move to end the program “unprecedented” and argued that it violated federal rule-making.
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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
