United States: Supreme Court authorizes Trump to revoke legal status of more than 500,000 immigrants

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday in favor of the Trump administration, allowing it to revoke the temporary legal status of more than 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

This status, granted starting in 2022 under the Biden administration, allowed 532,000 nationals from these countries to live and work temporarily on American soil.

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This humanitarian parole program, known by the acronym CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela), was aimed in particular at responding to the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border. It authorized legal entry for individuals who had passed a security check, provided they had a guarantor for accommodation, and offered a two-year residence permit.

However, the Supreme Court overturned a previous court ruling that upheld these protections. In a separate case, it also allowed the government to terminate the temporary status of approximately 350,000 other Venezuelan migrants.

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Federal Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts initially ruled that the Trump administration could not remove these statutes without an individual assessment of each case.

But the country’s highest court ruled otherwise. While this decision is not a final judgment, it means that the protections will not be maintained while the legal proceedings continue, affecting more than half a million people.

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Progressive Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Jackson denounced the “devastating consequences,” arguing that the Court failed to consider the impact of the sudden removal of rights for hundreds of thousands of non-citizens still awaiting decisions on their appeals.

Therefore, the case now returns to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.