The U.S. Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to temporarily pause a humanitarian program that has allowed nearly half a million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S. and remain here legally for two years.
The move to grant a stay in the case means that the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who were granted temporary parole under the program known as CHNV would lose their temporary legal status to be in the U.S. — and could potentially be deported while the case plays out in the lower courts.
The court did not give a reason in its brief order. But in a lengthy dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor joining, Jackson wrote that the court “has plainly botched this assessment today” in causing irreparable harm for everyone admitted under the program.
“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,” Jackson wrote in the dissent.
The program, put in place by the Biden administration in 2021, and then again in 2023, has allowed individuals from the four countries to enter the U.S. temporarily for humanitarian reasons, usually because conditions in their home country pose a threat to their safety.
The federal law authorizing such humanitarian “parole” dates back to the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. It was first used to provide temporary entry for some 30,000 Hungarians fleeing…