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By Gabe Whisnant
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to proceed with its plan to strip humanitarian parole protections from over 500,000 immigrants, exposing nearly 1 million people to potential deportation. The decision lifts a lower court's order that had temporarily shielded migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela while legal challenges played out.
The order is not a final ruling but clears the way for the administration to begin revoking legal protections as the case returns to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The move follows a broader Trump agenda to reverse Biden-era immigration policies and expedite mass deportations.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretaryTricia McLaughlin told Newsweek via email**,** "Today's decision is a victory for the American people. The Biden Administration lied to America. They allowed more than half a million poorly vetted aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their immediate family members to enter the United States through these disastrous parole programs; granted them opportunities to compete for American jobs and undercut American workers; forced career civil servants to promote the programs even when fraud was identified; and then blamed Republicans in Congress for the chaos that ensued and the crime that followed."
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Why It Matters
This is the first time a U.S. administration has attempted a mass revocation of humanitarian parole, a special designation typically granted for urgent humanitarian reasons.
The Trump administration has made several emergency appeals to the high court in recent months, many tied to immigration. While it has lost some key cases, the Supreme Court's conservative majority has increasingly opened the door for the administration to implement sweeping immigration changes while litigation is still pending.
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What to Know
In a separate case, the court had already allowed the administration to revoke legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelan migrants.
Trump's legal team argued that Biden had unlawfully granted mass parole and that individual case reviews would be too burdensome for immigration authorities.
Immigration advocates say the move could become one of the largest mass "illegalization" actions in modern American history, potentially uprooting hundreds of thousands of migrants who have lived legally in the U.S. with financial sponsors.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan joined the Supreme Court's conservative majority in siding with the Trump administration.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissent, warned the decision could cause "the lives of half a million migrants [to] unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims."
Her language echoed concerns raised by a lower-court judge who argued such revocations should be done individually—not en masse.
The Biden administration had used humanitarian parole more than any previous president, offering two-year legal stays to migrants who met strict eligibility criteria, including financial sponsorship and travel arrangements at their own expense.
Trump's campaign and presidency have centered on mass deportations and dismantling legal pathways created under Biden.
What People Are Saying
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in his filing: "Reviewing the results of those mass-parole programs, the new Administration concluded that they 'at best traded an unmanageable population of unlawful migration along the southwest border for the additional complication of a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status.'"
McLaughlin's statement to Newsweek continued: "Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First."
Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, one of the original plaintiffs, in a press release: "The Supreme Court has effectively greenlit deportation orders for an estimated half a million people, the largest such de-legalization in the modern era. Today's decision beats the record they set just two weeks ago when they allowed the termination of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the U.S.
"I cannot overstate how devastating this is: the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump Administration to unleash widespread chaos, not just for our clients and class members, but for their families, their workplaces, and their communities. While we grieve with these communities today, we remain resolved in our fight for the dignity they deserve."
Columbia Law School's Elora Mukherjee, in a statement sent to Newsweek: "This news is devastating and will have dire consequences for more than 500,000 migrants, who are now at risk of deportation, family separation, losing their jobs, and possibly even losing their lives."
What Happens Next
The case returns to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, but the Supreme Court's order means that protections will not remain in place while it proceeds. If the lower courts ultimately side with the migrants, the administration may be forced to reinstate legal status—though by then, many could have already been deported or left the country.
Update: 5/30/25, 11:20 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and remarks.
Update: 5/30/25, 12:09 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and remarks.
Update: 5/30/25, 12:17 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional remarks.
Update: 5/30/25, 7:10 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional remarks.
This article contains reporting by The Associated Press.
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