Supreme Court Lets Trump Revoke ‘Parole’ Status For 500,000 Migrants
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to remove the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, supporting the Republican president’s push to increase deportations.
The court stayed the order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston that halted the administration’s move to end the immigration “parole” granted to 532,000 of these migrants by former President Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to immediate removal while the case is heard in lower courts.
The ruling was unsigned and did not justify, as is common with emergency court orders. Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, officially dissented.
Immigration parole is a type of temporary authorization granted by American law to enter the nation for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” which allows grantees to live and work in the United States. Biden, a Democrat, used parole as part of his administration’s strategy for deterring illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump issued an executive order on January 20, his first day back in office, calling for the elimination of humanitarian parole programs. The Department of Homeland Security then attempted to terminate them in March, shortening the two-year parole awards. The government said that revoking parole would make it simpler to place migrants in an “expedited removal” procedure.
The lawsuit is one of many that the Trump administration has filed urgently with the nation’s highest court, seeking to overturn judgments by lower courts that hinder his sweeping plans, including those targeting immigration.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to let it go ahead with ending legal protections for migrants from Syria. This was the latest emergency appeal to the highest court in the country.
The Department of Justice wants the court to overturn a New York judge’s decision that stopped the Department of Homeland Security from ending temporary protected status for Syrians while lawsuits are going on.
The government is also asking for a wider ruling that could affect other cases about protecting people from other countries as the administration tries to crack down on immigration.
According to court records, about 6,100 people from Syria have temporary legal status after leaving their homes because of armed conflict.
The International Refugee Assistance Project says that ending those protections could stop people from being able to work legally in the United States and put more people at risk of deportation, especially the 800 people who have applications pending.
The first protections for Syrians came in 2012, during a civil war that lasted more than ten years and ended with the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem acted to revoke protected status less than a year later, finding that the situation “no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.”
Immigration lawyers disagreed with that choice, saying that Syria was still dealing with a humanitarian crisis and that quickly taking away legal protections would force Syrians in the US to make “impossible choices.”
The administration says that the department can give or take away the temporary protections and that judges shouldn’t get involved.
The government must respond to the appeal by March 4.
DHS has taken steps to take away legal protections that let immigrants from many countries stay in the US and work legally.
That includes more than a million people from Venezuela and Haiti all together.
A different judge in Washington recently stopped the government from taking away protections for 350,000 Haitians.
The administration has won a number of cases on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, which lets it move forward with important parts of Trump’s agenda.
Trump Warns Iran of ‘Total Obliteration’ if They Try To Harm Him HH
President Donald Trump warned Iran that continued assassination threats made by leaders in Tehran would be met with the country getting “blown up” and “total obliteration.”
“Well, they shouldn’t be doing it but I’ve left notification,” Trump said. “Anything ever happens, we’re going to blow the whole — the whole country’s going to get blown up.”
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Biden-era Intelligence officials briefed Trump about the alleged threats against him during his presidential campaign in 2024. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland said the plot was retaliation for the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani by the U.S. in 2020, during Trump’s first administration.
Despite being briefed by his administration, Trump on Tuesday said President Biden “should have said something” on the matter, adding that presidents should defend each other on such matters.
“But I have very firm instructions,” Trump continued. “Anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this earth.”
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Trump also spoke about the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran in Geneva.
“What are you expecting from these Iran talks in Geneva?” a reporter asked Trump aboard Air Force One.
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“So, I’ll be involved in those talks indirectly, and they’ll be very important. We’ll see what can happen. Typically, Iran’s a very tough negotiator; they’re good negotiators — or bad negotiators. I would say they’re bad negotiators because we could have had a deal instead of sending the B2s to knock out their nuclear potential. We had to send the B2s. I hope they’re going to be more reasonable. They want to make a deal,” Trump said.
“Have you been told that a deal is next to impossible?” the reporter followed up.
Trump replied, “No. I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal. They want to make a deal.”
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Trump previously said that he instructed officials to destroy Iran if they killed him.
The president said this after signing an executive order right after taking office that gave him all the tools he needed to talk to Iran’s government and put as much pressure on Tehran as possible.
“They haven’t done that and that would be a terrible thing for them to do,” Trump said at the time. “Not because of me — if they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end. I’ve left instructions, if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left. And, they shouldn’t be able to do it.”
Trump warned last week that the United States could send additional warships toward Iran if ongoing diplomatic negotiations fail to produce a deal, signaling that military pressure could increase as talks over Tehran’s nuclear program stall.
In remarks to Axios, Trump said the administration is considering deploying a second aircraft carrier strike group to the region in addition to the USS Abraham Lincoln and 9 additional warships already positioned near Iran, though he expressed hope that a diplomatic agreement can still be reached.
“Either we will make a deal or we will have to do something very tough like last time,” the president told Axios on Tuesday, a reference to the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites in June.
“Last time they didn’t believe I would do it. They overplayed their hand,” Trump added. “We have an armada that is heading there and another one might be going.”
The president emphasized that the United States is seeking to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions, halt the development of its ballistic missile program, and end support for militant proxy groups. Iranian officials have so far resisted expanding negotiations beyond nuclear-related issues.
He described the nuclear issue as a “matter of course” part of any negotiation, but also insisted that an agreement with Iran must also address Tehran’s ballistic missile stockpiles, per Axios.
Trump said the US “can make a great deal with Iran,” and Tehran “very much wants to make a deal.”
Trump’s comments came ahead of a planned visit to Washington, D.C. by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to press for a tougher U.S. stance and broader terms for any Iran deal that would include constraints on Tehran’s missile capabilities and regional activities.
Before heading to DC, the Israeli leader previewed some of what he and Trump were going to discuss.
“I will present to the president our understanding of the principles of the negotiations (with Iran) – the essential principles that are important not only to Israel – but to everyone who wants peace and security in the Middle East,” Netanyahu told reporters, per the New York Post.
The administration has already bolstered its military presence in the Middle East, with multiple warships and aircraft deployed as a means of deterrence and leverage.
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