The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily allowed the Trump administration to halt the Cuban, Haitian, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan (CHNV) humanitarian parole program, a Biden-era immigration policy that provided a legal mechanism for migrants from these nations to enter the U.S. legally and obtain work authorization, provided they had a sponsor.
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There are an estimate of 532,000 beneficiaries of the program.
The program was implemented by the Biden administration to address increased migration and a legislative stalemate on immigration reform. It was rolled out for Venezuelans in late 2022, and later for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans in early 2023. The program was used in the past to admit nearly 200,000 Cubans in the 1960s and over 350,000 Southeast Asians after the Vietnam War.
By offering legal pathways to entry, the Biden administration hoped to deter dangerous illegal crossings. Following the program’s launch, Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants from these countries dropped significantly.
President Trump moved to end the policy on his first day back in office. A federal judge in Massachusetts initially blocked the revocation in March, ruling that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem lacked the authority to end parole for all 532,000 beneficiaries without individual case reviews. That decision was upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the administration’s categorical approach legally insufficient.
On May 8 the Trump Administration appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the secretary Noem has broad discretion to terminate parole programs once their goals are met.
The Supreme Court granted the emergency request in an unsigned order, with no reasoning provided, The New York Times reported. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, warning of the “devastating consequences” of uprooting hundreds of thousands of lives while legal challenges are still pending.