WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on May 30 said the Trump administration can revoke for now the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the United States.
Two of the court’s three liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor – dissented.
Jackson wrote that the court “plainly botched” its assessment of whether the government or the 532,000 migrants would suffer the greater harm if their legal status ends while the administration’s mass termination of that status is being litigated.
Jackson said the majority undervalued “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.”
The brief opinion was unsigned and did not include an explanation, as is common for action on emergency requests.
The court previously allowed the administration to strip more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants of temporary protected status involving a different program.
A program that provides a temporary safe haven
In this case, the administration wants to cut short a program allowing migrants to live and the work in the United States temporarily for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
Lawyers for the migrants said half a million people lawfully in the country will become subject to deportation, in what it called the “largest mass illegalization event in modern American history.”
“I cannot overstate how devastating this is: the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump Administration to unleash widespread chaos, not just for our clients and class members, but for their families, their workplaces, and their communities,” Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, said in a statement.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said the migrants should not have been allowed into the country in the first place.
“Of course they have to be deported,” Miller told reporters May 30 at the White House. “And the good news is that airplanes travel in two directions.”
Labor unions said the migrants filled worker shortages
Labor unions and communities that have welcomed the migrants said they’ve filled gaps in key industries, including healthcare, construction and manufacturing.
Nearly 20% of the workers at one automotive parts manufacturer are in the temporary program, according to labor unions.
The Trump administration said it’s determined the migrants’ presence in the United States is “against the national interests” and the courts don’t get to decide otherwise.
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.
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 makes it harder to enforce immigration laws for those already in the country.
Immigrant rights groups challenged the change on behalf of the immigrants and their sponsors.
Lower courts sided with the migrants
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 argued the lower courts are “undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election.”
Lawyers for a group of cities and counties said the abrupt cancellation of the program “would case severe economic and societal harms.”
Contributing: Bart Jansen.
