WASHINGTON—Today, the Supreme Court issued a stay or suspension of a lower-court order in a lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s termination of over half a million grants of mass parole by the Biden Administration, allowing the parole terminations and the removal of these aliens to proceed while the case is on appeal. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) had filed a brief in the Court urging that result.
In one parole program alone, the Biden Administration let 532,000 aliens from four countries—Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—sign up on an app and come to ports of entry, where they were given automatic parole and sent into the interior of the country. After the Trump Administration terminated these grants of parole, a federal district court issued an injunction against the terminations—an order that the Supreme Court suspended today for the duration of the case.
In its brief, IRLI had shown that President Trump has authority directly from the Constitution to terminate these grants of parole. The Court has long recognized that those given parole—which by statute must only be given case-by-case for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, requirements Biden ignored—have not even entered the country in a legal sense. As far as the law is concerned, they are still at the border, wherever they are physically located. And the Court has also long recognized that the President has inherent constitutional authority to block aliens from entering the country.
Today, in staying the lower court’s order, the Supreme Court signaled that, as IRLI had argued, the chances that plaintiffs would prevail on the merits of their lawsuit were low.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the President’s authority to exclude aliens, but no President has any authority to let mass numbers of aliens into the country, using an app or otherwise,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “It follows that Trump has clear authority to roll back Biden’s unlawful invasion by appointment. We are pleased the Court saw how unlikely there plaintiffs were to succeed in their legal claims, and let that rollback continue.”
The case is Noem v. Doe, No. 24A1079 (Supreme Court).
