The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in its attempt to end temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua, a program introduced under President Joe Biden. The Justice Department on Thursday, May 8, requested that the justices suspend a federal court order that blocked the administration’s effort to revoke immigration parole granted to these migrants.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of Boston had earlier ruled against the administration’s move, stating that such broad terminations violate the federal law that governs immigration parole. Under U.S. law, parole allows individuals to remain and work in the country for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
In their Supreme Court filing, Justice Department lawyers argued that Talwani’s decision undermined “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry” and reversed “democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election,” which saw Donald Trump return to office. The administration maintained that ending the parole program is part of Trump’s broader immigration strategy, and asserted that the judge had overstepped by interfering in executive control over immigration and foreign policy.
Trump had issued an executive order on January 20, his first day back in office, calling for an end to the parole program. The Department of Homeland Security followed in March by terminating the program and cutting short the two-year parole grants already given to roughly 400,000 people. In total, about 530,000 migrants were granted immigration parole under Biden’s administration, which had opened the program in 2022 to Venezuelans arriving by air and later expanded it to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.
The administration argued that removing parole protections would allow for faster deportation through expedited removal processes. Plaintiffs, including migrants who were granted parole and their sponsors, sued the government, asserting that the mass termination violated federal law, which requires individual, case-by-case parole determinations.
Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center and a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, criticized the administration’s actions. “The Trump administration is hellbent on punishing nearly half a million people who did everything the government asked of them,” she said. “Everyone sponsors, beneficiaries, communities and the economy alike benefit from humanitarian parole.”
The Supreme Court has asked the plaintiffs to respond to the government’s request by May 15. The case adds to a growing list of emergency filings by the Trump administration aimed at reversing court decisions that have blocked various policy measures, many of them focused on immigration.