The Supreme Court voted to allow President Donald Trump to end a Biden-era safe-haven program that had temporarily protected and permitted more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans to remain and work in the U.S.
Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor were the only Supreme Court justices to oppose revoking the temporary legal status of undocumented Americans because the Trump administration determined their presence goes "against the national interests" and the courts cannot decide otherwise.
In her dissent, Jackson argued that the court "plainly botched" its evaluation of whether the government or the roughly 530,000 migrants would face greater harm if their protections were lifted while the legality of the mass termination was still being challenged.
Jackson criticized the majority for downplaying "the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending."
Lawyers representing the migrants said the decision will subject half a million people, who are currently in the U.S. lawfully, to deportation, describing it as the "largest mass illegalization event in modern American history."
"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," Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, said in a statement obtained by USA Today.
On May 30, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller told press at the White House that the migrants should not have been allowed into the country in the first place.
"Of course they have to be deported," Miller proclaimed. "And the good news is that airplanes travel in two directions."
Lawyers representing a coalition of cities and counties warned that the sudden termination of the program "would cause severe economic and societal harms."
© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
