WASHINGTON – The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to let it revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the United States.
“The district court has nullified one of the Administration’s most consequential immigration policy decisions,” the Justice Department said in its emergency request to block the lower court’s decision.
The Supreme Court asked lawyers for the migrants to respond by May 15.
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The administration wants to cut short a program that provided a two-year haven in the U.S. for immigrants because of economic, security, political and health crises in their home countries.
The Biden administration hoped the program would deter migrants from those countries from trying to enter the country illegally.
But the Trump administration cancelled people’s work permits and deportation protections, arguing the program failed as a deterrent and made it harder to enforce immigration laws for those already in the country.
The move is part of the President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and push to ramp up deportations, including of noncitizens previously granted a legal right to live and work in the United States.
Immigrant rights groups challenged the change on behalf of the immigrants and their sponsors.
A federal judge in Massachusetts said the abrupt curtailing of the program was based on a legal error, as the administration wrongly concluded that letting the temporary status naturally expire would foreclose the Homeland Security Department’s ability to legally expedite their deportations.
District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, also said early cancellation of protections requires a case-by-case review for each participant.
A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed Talwani’s decision to temporarily block mass cancellation. All three judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.
The Justice Department argues the lower courts are “undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump asks Supreme Court to let it revoke migrants’ temporary status
