Supreme Court Gives Trump A Big Win

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to end a parole program originally created under President Biden, which had provided temporary legal protections to hundreds of thousands of migrants from four Latin American countries. The decision is a major victory for President Trump’s broader immigration crackdown and marks the second time the court has sided with his administration in efforts to strip legal status from large groups of noncitizens.

The majority did not offer a written explanation for its decision. However, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a sharp dissent, criticizing the ruling as reckless and harmful to the hundreds of thousands of people affected. The two justices warned that the ruling will throw the lives of migrants into chaos, possibly forcing them from the country before their legal claims are fully heard and resolved.

Jackson, writing for both dissenters, said the court had set a dangerously low bar for the government to prove that its actions wouldn’t cause irreparable harm. “It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm,” she wrote. “And it undervalues 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.” She added, “It is apparent that the Government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage.”

The parole program in question had granted temporary legal status to approximately 532,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The Biden-era policy allowed these individuals to live and work in the U.S. for up to two years while awaiting more permanent immigration decisions. Lower courts had previously blocked Trump’s efforts to terminate the program, ruling that his Department of Homeland Security failed to conduct the required individualized case assessments.

Despite those rulings, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gave the green light for the administration to proceed with its rollback, overriding the lower courts and removing protections for hundreds of thousands of people. The decision is part of a broader effort by Trump to dismantle key elements of his predecessor’s immigration agenda and reinforce his hardline stance at the border.

The ruling is likely to spark renewed legal and political battles as immigrant rights groups, Democratic lawmakers, and affected families push back against what they see as an aggressive and punitive campaign. With legal challenges still ongoing in the lower courts, the future for those protected under the Biden-era policy remains uncertain but now, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, the administration is free to begin revoking those protections immediately.