Top US court lets Trump revoke legal status for 500,000 migrants

The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday in his immigration crackdown, giving his administration the green light to revoke the legal status of half a million migrants from four Caribbean and Latin American countries.

- Agence France-Presse

The decision puts 532,000 people who came from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the United States under a two-year humanitarian “parole” programme launched by former president Joe Biden at risk of deportation.

And it marked the second time the highest US court has sided with Trump in his aggressive push to deliver on his election pledge to deport millions of non-citizens, through a series of policy announcements that have prompted a flurry of lawsuits.

But the opinion sparked a scathing dissent from two justices in the liberal minority who said the six conservatives on the bench had “plainly botched” their ruling and undervalued the “devastating consequences” to those potentially affected.

The revoked programme had allowed entry into the United States for two years for up to 30,000 migrants a month from the four countries, all of which have dismal human rights records.

But as Trump takes a hard line on immigration, his administration moved to overturn those protections, winning a ruling from the Supreme Court earlier this month that allowed officials to begin deporting some 350,000 Venezuelans.