The government asks the justices to allow DHS revoke parole to half a million non-citizens
The Trump Administration returned to the Supreme Court Thursday afternoon seeking emergency relief. D. John Sauer asked the court this time to pause the ruling of a federal district in Massachusetts which blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to revoke the Biden administration’s grant of parole, that is, permission for noncitizens to temporarily stay in the United States due to humanitarian or public interests, to more than half a million noncitizens of Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua.
Sauer said that the order of U.S. district judge Indira Talwani had “nullified one the Administration’s most important immigration policy decisions,” blocking the decision by DHS secretary Kristi Noem and “maintaining parole for up two years for 532,000 foreigners whose continued presence in United States is deemed contrary to U.S. interest.” The DHS secretary has the discretionary power to allow immigrants into the country or to revoke this permission.
During Biden’s administration, Alejandro Mayorkas, then DHS Secretary, granted two-year parole terms to a large number of immigrants from Cuba. Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela. The CHNV special parole programs were based on the idea that allowing mass parole for citizens of those countries would discourage illegal migration across the U.S. Mexico border. In March, DHS stopped the CHNV special parole programs from granting parole to noncitizens. However, it retained the discretion to grant the parole on a per-case basis. It argued that the programs “at best” had “traded an unmanageable number of illegal migrants along the southwest border, for the added complication of a significant population of aliens living in the interior of the United States with no clear path to a permanent status.”
Talwani prohibited DHS from terminating the special-parole program without a case-by-case evaluation of the decision to terminate parole for noncitizens. Talwani rejected Noem’s argument that Talwani did not have the authority to review Noem’s decision to end these programs, because another provision in federal immigration law prevents judges from making such discretionary decisions. Talwani agreed with the DHS secretary that courts could not review his decision to revoke a particular parole determination. Talwani argued that this ban did not apply because Noem was not able to revoke a category of parole determinations and, therefore, had no discretion to exercise. The U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit, refused to suspend Talwani’s orders. This prompted the government to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday.
Sauer argued that Talwani’s order “creates perverse one-way rachet”. Although Mayorkas had “granted CHNV parole categorically”, the order “failed only Secretary Noem’s decision to restore traditional case-bycase process by undoing prior categorical grants of CHNV parole. The INA, on the other hand, says the exact opposite. As a result of this, he wrote, “the government would have to make individual parole determinations for each one of the 532,000 CHNV parolees–a colossal task.”
Posted in Emergency appeals and applications, Featured
Cases: Noem v. Doe
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Amy Howe
The government asks the justices to allow DHS revoke parole to half a million non-citizens.
SCOTUSblog
(May. 8, 2025, 3:06 PM),
