A divided Supreme Court cleared the way for the Donald Trump administration to revoke the provisional legal status of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have been allowed to live and work in the U.S. while their immigration cases play out, The Washington Post reported.
Officials said Friday’s decision on immigration parole could affect about 530,000 migrants, though many of them may have obtained another legal status in the U.S. Cubans, for instance, are eligible to apply for permanent residency and a path to citizenship under a 1966 federal law.
The decision is the second this month in which the high court has given Trump officials permission to terminate programs that protect immigrants fleeing countries racked by war or economic turmoil while litigation on those programs continues. The justices also allowed the administration to revoke temporary protections that allowed a different group of nearly 350,000 Venezuelans to remain in the U.S.
Legal challenges to the Trump administration’s revocations of protected status will continue in lower courts and could eventually reach the Supreme Court for full hearings on the merits.
It’s unclear how many of the migrants in the parole program could face deportation. Many who initially entered the U.S. with the provisional status have since moved on to other legal protections that remain in effect, such as asylum or permanent residency. Some have temporary protected status that the Trump administration has not revoked.
