After the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last Friday that the Trump administration can, for now, end humanitarian parole for half a million migrants, immigration advocates insist the legal battle will end sooner than later — and in their favor.
In March, President Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, moved to cancel humanitarian parole for 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua — even though they were promised by the Biden administration they could stay legally in the U.S. for two years.
Most of those parole beneficiaries are here in Florida.
Noem argued then that former President Biden had created the humanitarian parole program for those four nationalities illegally, and that therefore Trump could immediately end not just the program but the legal status of those migrants who'd been granted the two-year stay.
READ MORE: Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end humanitarian status for some migrants
In April, a lower federal court judge in Boston blocked the action, saying the administration did not give adequate reason for cutting the migrants' parole status short in that manner. But last week the Supreme Court said Trump could proceed while legal challenges to his action finish in the lower federal courts.
The plaintiffs in those cases now say they’re "accelerating" the litigation and are confident they’ll win out.
“Our team is now exploring next steps to accelerate the case to final judgment at the lower court," said Laura Flores-Perilla, an attorney with the nonprofit Justice Action Center in Los Angeles, which has led the suit against Trump's humanitarian parole policy along with the nonprofits Human Rights First and the Haitian Bridge Alliance.
"Our position is that [Trump's] mass parole termination is not lawful," Flores-Perilla said — adding that the most recent explanations the administration has entered in the case for terminating the parole "will help us bring the case to a final resolution" sooner than expected.
“What it boils down to is a broken contract: the government is pulling the rug from under these migrants.”Laura Flores-Perilla
Flores-Perilla argues one reason Trump’s effort is unlawful is that it reneges on what the U.S. government told those half a million migrant beneficiaries — many of whom are trying to upgrade their immigration status while they have the parole.
“What it’s boiled down to is a broken contract," Flores-Perilla said.
While she added that's not necessarily the actual legal argument the plaintiffs are making, Flores-Perilla said she's certain the federal courts are in fact concerned about the fact that "the [humanitarian parole] beneficiaries followed all the steps that the government required of them ... for the two-year grant [which] involved paying fees, paying for flights.
"And the government now is pulling the rug from under them.”
"At some point," said Human Rights First attorney Anwen Hughes, "people should be able to trust the operations of government."
The Biden administration originally created the humanitarian parole program in 2022. It allowed vetted Cuban, Venezuelan, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants with sponsors in the U.S. to come temporarily, with work permits, to escape their countries' brutal dictatorships, economic collapses and gang violence.
Just as important, the parole was meant to turn migrants away from entering the U.S. at the overwhelmed southern border.
Last week's Supreme Court ruling now renders those half a million migrants deportable, regardless of how much time they might have left on their parole here.
On Monday, South Florida immigrant advocates accused Trump of cruelly turning the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants illegal overnight in order to meet the epic deportation quotas he's set to please his anti-immigration voter base.
"Lives are being torn apart," said Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition at a press conference at the Family Action Network Movement (FANM) in Miami.
"Because [the Trump administration] can't meet their deportation quotas, they're fabricating" pretexts for ending programs like the parole "just to satisfy an inhumane drive."
Trump has also moved to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for hundreds of thousands of other Venezuelan and Haitian migrants. The Supreme Court recently ruled he could move forward with that as well while lawsuits play out in the federal courts — where judges have blocked him on that issue as well.
