WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light on Friday to revoke — for now — the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicara­gua and Venezuela.

The decision puts some 532,000 people who came to the United States under a “parole” programme launched by former president Joe Biden at risk of deportation.

The parole programme 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.

But as President Donald Trump takes a hard line on immigration, his administration has moved to overturn those protections in legal battles that reached all the way to the Supreme Court earlier this month.

The government had asked the court to lift a lower court order barring it from ending the humanitarian protections.

The conservative-dominated court — whose order was unsigned and provided no reasoning — granted the administration a stay on that order, while legal battles continue.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackon and Sonia Sotom­ayor dissented, warning of the “devastating consequences” of upending the “lives and livelihood of nearly half a million non-citizens while their legal claims are pending”, according to the document.

The migrants “now face two unbearable options. On the one hand, they could elect to leave the United States and, thereby, confront `dangers in their native countries’, experience destructive`family separation’,” and possibly forfeit any chance of remedy based on their claims, they wrote.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2025