Supreme Court Puts Hold on Court Order and Allows DJT to Revoke TPS While Challenge is Heard

The Supreme Court put a hold on federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s order that halted Donald Trump’s termination of temporary protected status, called parole, for 532,000 immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua.

Trump is therefore allowed to revoke TPS for those immigrants and make them subject to rapid deportation while their challenge against TPS removal is still being heard in lower courts, even though he has repeatedly proven incapable of retrieving immigrants deported wrongfully.

The Supreme Court’s emergency action was unsigned and unexplained. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented. Her dissent was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Extracts from the dissent include:

When this Court evaluates whether or not to stay a lower court’s order, the factors we apply are well established: The applicant must show a fair prospect that we will grant certiorari and reverse, that the merits favor them, that irrep–arable harm will befall them should we deny the stay, and,in close cases, that the equities and public interest are on their side. [citations] In any given case, each of these considerations bears on the appropriateness of the requested intervention and is a prerequisite to obtaining relief. The Court has plainly botched this assessment today. It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm. And it undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending. Even if the Government is likely to win on the merits, in our legal system, success takes time and the stay standards require more than anticipated victory. I would have denied the Government’s application because its harm-related showing is patently insufficient. The balance of the equities also weighs heavily in respondents’ favor. While it is apparent that the Government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage, court-ordered stays exist to minimize—not maximize—harm to litigating parties.

and

Respondents now face two unbearable options. On the one hand, they could elect to leave the United States and, thereby, confront “dangers in their native countries,” experience destructive “family separation,” and possibly “forfei[t] any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their . . . claims,” as the District Court found. App. 18a. On the other, they could remain in the United States after pa–role termination and risk imminent removal at the hands of Government agents, along with its serious attendant con–sequences. See id., at 19a (confirming that respondents “may be subject to arrest and detention,” “will no longer be authorized to work legally in this country,” and will lose “opportunities to seek any adjustment of status”).Either choice creates significant problems for respondents that far exceed any harm to the Government, should this Court decline the stay request. Both options might also deprive this Court of jurisdiction to decide respondents’ pending claims. At a minimum, granting the stay would facilitate needless human suffering before the courts have reached a final judgment regarding the legal arguments at issue, while denying the Government’s application would not have anything close to that kind of practical impact.

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