The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted President Donald Trump a victory in his mass deportation policy by allowing him to temporarily revoke the legal status of more than 530 people.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted President Donald Trump a victory in his policy of mass deportations by authorizing him to temporarily revoke the legal status of more than 530,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Haitian immigrants.
In March, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem ended a special program instituted under Donald Trump's Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. Biden had authorized nationals of these four nationalities to reside in the United States for two years due to the human rights situation in their respective countries.
But a federal judge in Boston, in the northeast of the country, suspended this decision on April 14.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court, which received an emergency appeal from the Trump administration, lifted this suspension on Friday while an appeals court ruled on the merits. The Court did not provide reasons for its decision, but one of the three liberal justices—out of a total of nine—Ketanji Brown Jackson, expressed her strong disagreement, criticizing her colleagues in the majority for having "missed their analysis" of the appropriateness of staying the lower courts' decision.
She criticized them for "underestimating the devastating consequences of allowing the government to radically disrupt the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million foreign nationals while their legal appeals are pending," in a written opinion joined by another liberal justice, Sonia Sotomayor.
The status granted by the Biden administration to Venezuelan, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Haitian immigrants has allowed some 532,000 of them to enter the United States.
In April, the lower court judge ruled that the Trump administration had misinterpreted the law by applying an expedited deportation procedure for foreigners who entered the country illegally to immigrants protected by government programs.
On May 19, the Supreme Court also authorized the government to temporarily revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which prohibited it from deporting some 350,000 Venezuelans.
The Secretary of Homeland Security canceled an 18-month extension of this status for Venezuelans, due to the perceived "authoritarian" nature of Nicolas Maduro's regime, a decision made by his Democratic predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, and which was to take effect in early April.
Donald Trump has made the fight against illegal immigration a top priority, referring to an "invasion" of the United States by "criminals from abroad" and communicating extensively about immigrant deportations.
But his mass expulsion program has been thwarted or halted by multiple court rulings, including those from the Supreme Court, notably on the grounds that the targeted individuals should be able to assert their rights.
His government routinely accuses judges who oppose his decisions of "encroaching" on the prerogatives of the executive branch.
