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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the administration of Donald Trump, allowing him to cancel the temporary legal protections for migrants awarded by former U.S. President Joe Biden under a program known as humanitarian parole. A total of 532,000 migrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti entered the US through the now-cancelled two-year program, but the new ruling specifically affects those who entered after May 2023.
Approximately 93,000 Nicaraguans have arrived in the United States since 2023 under the humanitarian parole program. Over 60,000 of them haven’t filed for asylum or any other adjustment to their legal status. This new decision represents another setback for these immigrants, leaving those formerly protected by the parole program in “danger” and “highly vulnerable” to deportation given the end of the humanitarian program and the Supreme Court ruling.
On May 29, 2025, the Supreme Court ratified the emergency request filed by the National Security Department, with a vote of six justices in favor and two dissenting: liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The Trump Administration had challenged the ruling of a federal judge from Massachusetts, who considered that the Government could not annul the “humanitarian parole”, which allowed these 532,000 people to live and work temporarily in the US, without analyzing the procedure on a case-by-case basis. That lower court ruling now remains without effect.
Court ruling: “A botched assessment”
In a lengthy dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated that the court “has plainly botched this assessment today.”
“(The court) requires next to nothing from the Government in terms respect to irreparable harm. And it undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives of and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending,” the judge writes.
Brown Jackson stresses that the more than half a million migrants now face “two unbearable options.” On the one hand, they can choose to leave the U.S. and face “dangers in their native countries,” as the Massachusetts judge has already warned, or they can remain in the country after their parole expires “risk imminent removal at the hands of government agents, along with its serious attendant consequences.”
Recommendations for migrants
Nicaraguan political scientist and expert on migration and remittance issues, Manuel Orozco, assured CONFIDENCIAL that the Supreme Court’s ruling against parole “is not a surprise” and that it was already presumed that it was going to happen.
The expert reiterated several recommendations to try and deal with this decision of the Trump government against the immigrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti. In his opinion, people from these four nationalities who are in the US through the humanitarian parole program could join together to push for four points:
- A moratorium on the humanitarian parole program until January 2026.
- Work to support the migrant community benefiting from the program so that they can organize their return to their countries in an orderly manner.
- Propose pressure policies to the United States from a platform of organized civic organizations representing a broad sector of their countries.
- Present mediation proposals to the United States with the countries of origin to initiate a process of communication and exchange of mechanisms to facilitate a stable, peaceful and democratic return to their nations.
According to ruling against migrants in less than fifteen days
This is the second Supreme Court ruling on immigration matters in 2025. In mid-May, Trump was authorized to rescind Temporary Protective Status for some 350,000 Venezuelan migrants.
Republican President Donald Trump returned to the White House with a campaign promise to enormously tighten the country’s immigration policies. According to him, that includes the expulsion of millions of immigrants.
Former President Joe Biden (2021-2025) broadened the program known as “humanitarian parole” in 2023, to facilitate the legal temporary entry of citizens from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti, at that time among the nationalities with the greatest presence at the southern US border, attempting to enter the United States.
*With information from EFE.
