Washington (AFP) – The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Solicitor General John Sauer asked for the lifting of a lower court order barring the administration from ending humanitarian protections for migrants from the four nations.
In March, the administration moved to revoke the legal status of some 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who came to the United States under a “parole” program launched by former president Joe Biden. The parole program allowed entry into the United States for two years for up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries, which have grim human rights records.
District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, blocked the administration last month from revoking the legal status of the migrants. In her order, Talwani said the administration had acted on a flawed interpretation of immigration law, with expedited removal applicable to non-citizens entering the United States illegally, but not those authorized to be in the country, such as through the parole program.
Under Trump’s revocation, the immigrants would have lost their legal protection effective April 24, just 30 days after the Department of Homeland Security published its order in the Federal Register. The Trump administration asked the conservative-majority Supreme Court last week to back its bid to end temporary protected status (TPS) shielding more than 350,000 Venezuelans from deportation.
Biden extended TPS for another 18 months just days before Trump returned to the White House in January. The United States grants TPS to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary” conditions. A federal judge in California put a temporary stay in March on plans by Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem to end deportation protections for the Venezuelan nationals.
Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants. Among other measures, he invoked an obscure wartime law to fly hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
© 2024 AFP
