What to Know About the Biden-Era Migrant Program the Supreme Court Just Let Trump End

Hundreds of thousands of migrants could be at risk of deportation after a divided Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump Administration can—for now—end a Biden-era program that extended humanitarian parole protections to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The CHNV special-parole program allowed migrants from the four countries to travel legally to the U.S. and stay and work in the country for up to two years. It was used by at least 530,000 migrants since late 2022.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, the latest of several decisions the court has issued green-lighting the Trump Administration’s aggressive approach to immigration, gives Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem the discretion to revoke the parole program while legal challenges to its termination move through the courts.

“[The Biden Administration] allowed more than half a million poorly vetted aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their immediate family members to enter the United States through these disastrous parole programs; granted them opportunities to compete for American jobs and undercut American workers,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said after the ruling came down. “Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First.” 

Several immigration advocacy groups said the decision will have “devastating consequences” on immigrant communities.

“This is a deeply tragic decision that penalizes half a million people for complying with our immigration laws,” Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization, wrote in a statement emailed to TIME. “This decision will have devastating and immediate consequences…The government failed to show any harm remotely comparable to that which will come from half a million people losing their jobs and becoming subject to deportation.”

Here’s what to know about the program and the Supreme Court’s decision.

What is the CHNV program?

The program, rolled out during the Biden Administration, allowed migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to obtain authorization to come to the United States legally, as well as to stay and work legally in the country and seek humanitarian relief or other immigration benefits, if they were eligible, during a two-year parole period.

It was initially adopted in 2022 as a response to high levels of illegal immigration, specifically for Venezuelan immigrants, says David Beir, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. The program was predated by a similar program created in early 2022 for Ukrainian immigrants in response to the surge of Ukrainians who came to the border seeking asylum after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The program required migrants from Venezuela to obtain a sponsor in the United States who would be willing to take some measure of financial responsibility for them, as well as an airline ticket to fly directly, and legally, to the United States. 

The Biden Administration rolled out the program in hopes that it would give the government control to vet incoming migrants and manage the flow of arrivals through air travel, rather than across the southern U.S. border, Beir wrote in 2023. Eligibility for the protections was later extended to people from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti, as well.

What did the Supreme Court rule?

The Supreme Court’s Friday decision overruled a lower court in Massachusetts that temporarily blocked the federal government from implementing Noem’s March 25 order to revoke the legal status given to migrants under the program. 

That order was in line with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 Executive Order “Securing Our Borders,” which instructed Noem to “terminate all categorical parole programs that are contrary to the policies of the United States established in my Executive Orders.” 

The Supreme Court ruling will allow the Administration to end the program while the case proceeds.

The decision was unsigned and not accompanied by an explanation. Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson issued an incensed dissent, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, stating that the court “has plainly botched this assessment today.” 

What will the impact of the ruling be?

The program had been widely lauded by immigrant rights groups as a “humanitarian relief” program utilized to help those in unstable conditions in their own countries seek refuge.

“Even within an immigration system that is decades overdue for a Congressional overhaul, the CHNV parole processes stood out as an innovative model for creating legal and orderly pathways,” wrote Schulte, of FWD.us. “Granting parole to people fleeing harm dramatically reduced unauthorized migration to the southern border, and it allowed people to work and contribute, bringing greater stability to families, employers, and communities across the country.”

Beir, of the Cato Institute, said that terminating the program could quickly end the legal status of migrants who have been protected under the program.

“The administration’s already empowered its agents to arrest people who are on parole, to arrest people who are applicants for asylum,” Beir told TIME. “The practical upshot is that a lot of these people had parole for two years, and if they haven’t applied for asylum, then there’s really no basis for them to be in the country, and they start accumulating unlawful presence as soon as this decision takes effect.”

According to Beir, it is unclear how many migrants will be affected and potentially deported due to the ruling.

“Certainly half a million came in through the program,” Beir said. “But then, a lot of these people were from Haiti and Venezuela, have temporary protected status, which you know the administration is eventually going to revoke as well. And then, of course, the backstop of being an asylum applicant for many people will be another way for them to be able to keep working legally and, you know, going through the process and stay here.”

Beir says an important aspect of this decision that must be highlighted is that the migrants who used the program went through legal pathways to enter the United States—pathways opened based on promises made by the United States government when the program began:

“They pay for their own flights. They travel on airlines like any other visitors to the United States and the other you know, part of this is really completely unprecedented for an administration to en masse terminate the status of people who’ve come to the United States legally like this.”