Supreme Court lets Trump shutter Biden 'parole' program for migrants

The Supreme Court on Friday blocked a lower court ruling that ordered the administration to continue processing cases for illegal immigrants under a Biden-era “parole” program, freeing President Trump to push hundreds of thousands of migrants into unlawful status.

The court, in a brief unsigned order, stayed the ruling of District Judge Indira Talwani while the case develops.

The ruling marks a massive policy victory for the president, allowing him to shut down — for now — one of the biggest factors in the Biden border surge.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying the majority “botched” its ruling. Justice Jackson said even if the government is ultimately right that it has the power to shut down the parole program, it’s wrong to kick “nearly half a million noncitizens” out of their deportation amnesty.

“Even assuming a likelihood that the law permits the government to terminate parole grants in this fashion, I would let the courts decide that highly consequential legal issue first,” Justice Jackson wrote. “Instead, the court allows the government to do what it wants to do regardless, rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”

She said the court’s decision will force the migrants to choose between “unbearable” options of leaving the U.S. or remain and risk a formal deportation.

“Either choice creates significant problems for respondents that far exceed any harm to the government,” she said.

The Trump administration has tried to pressure migrants to take the first option — self-deportation — even as it has struggled to deliver on the second option of forced removals.

At issue is the CHNV program, which allowed more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter America without a valid visa, as long as they secured a financial sponsor and flew into U.S. airports.

The Biden administration justified the program by saying those migrants had been coming across the southern border and were overwhelming the Border Patrol. Letting them come through airports took pressure off the border.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas granted them the parole, which gave them a two-year iffy legal status and work permits to compete for jobs.

The program proved rife with fraud.

The Washington Times has reported that people were selling sponsorships in Nicaragua for $5,000 apiece, and gang members and illegal immigrants were signing up to be sponsors.

In one case, an application gave former first lady Michelle Obama’s passport number.

The CHNV program turned into a significant issue in the 2024 campaign, with Mr. Trump arguing it allowed dangerous individuals, including members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang now declared a terrorist organization, to infiltrate the U.S.

In January, the new Trump administration moved quickly to shut down CHNV and revoke the status of those already on it.

White House officials pointed out that even the Biden administration acknowledged that parole was a discretionary grant of a stay of deportation and could be rescinded.

But Judge Talwani, an Obama appointee to the court in Massachusetts, ordered the program restored in a ruling last month.

She said that since the law requires that parole be granted on a case-by-case basis, it must be revoked the same way.

She said the Trump categorical revocation violated that.

“Defendants have offered no substantial reason or public interest that justifies forcing individuals who were granted parole into the United States for a specified duration to leave (or move into undocumented status) in advance of the original date their parole was set to expire,” the judge said.

The Trump team argued that the Biden administration abused the parole program and the new administration was returning it to normal.

Under the law, parole is supposed to be for “urgent” humanitarian reasons or “significant” benefit to the U.S.

Before the Biden administration, humanitarian cases were interpreted to mean serious medical issues, and the public benefit cases were ones where a migrant was needed to serve as a witness or help a criminal investigation.

Biden officials expanded that, saying the benefit was reducing pressure on the border.

Critics said Mr. Mayorkas worked around the law to fabricate a new quasi-immigration system, creating a new class of hundreds of thousands of immigrants with the shaky legal status.