In a 7–2 ruling on May 30, the US Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court’s injunction preventing the termination of the CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela) humanitarian parole program. The decision effectively gives the Trump administration a green light to deport over half a million people to countries currently under US sanctions or trade restrictions.
Those now facing deportation live legally in the US through the CHNV program, which began under the Biden administration in January 2023. As of 2025, roughly 211,000 people from Haiti had entered the US through the program, followed by 160,000 from Venezuela, about 87,000 from Cuba, and 73,000 from Nicaragua.
In order to qualify for the program, applicants were required to have a valid passport, a financial sponsor in the US, submit to invasive biographic and biometric security screenings and not be a resident or dual national of another country.
Sponsors of CHNV immigrants were also required to meet a series of conditions, including being a US citizen or lawful resident and submitting financial paperwork to the government to demonstrate sufficient income.
Under the program, immigrants could live and work in the US legally for two years and apply for a Social Security number. While it did not grant a “pathway to citizenship,” immigrants granted CHNV parole status were allowed to apply for other forms of protection, such as asylum.
In Friday’s dissent, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Jackson stated that the lawyers for the immigrants had shown “that tangible, imminent, and significant harm is likely to befall them if this Court grants the application and issues a stay.”
She noted that immigrants using the program “have integrated into American neighborhoods and communities in the hopes of eventually securing long-term legal status.”
Jackson wrote that the government failed to show what harm would be caused by lifting the lower court’s injunction, while lawyers for the immigrants demonstrated “irreparable harm” if the stay was granted.
“The Court has now apparently determined… that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims,” she wrote.
She concluded:
Even assuming a likelihood that the law permits the Government to terminate parole grants in this fashion, I would let the courts decide that highly consequential legal issue first…. Instead, the Court allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless, rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.
Speaking at the White House on Friday alongside billionaire fascist Elon Musk, President Donald Trump hailed the Court’s decision, saying it was “very important on immigration that we be able to get people out without having to go through a long court case.”
The aspiring dictator made clear he intended to use Friday’s decision to further trample on everyone’s right to due process: “We can’t keep them for years here as we go through trials, we have to get them out rapidly.”
He added, “And we know who they are, and we are very careful about who they are.”
The CHNV humanitarian parole program was an expansion of an earlier initiative, called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), created by the Biden administration in October 2022 for Venezuelans. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued a stay on a lower court’s injunction blocking the Trump administration from revoking TPS protections for some 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants. As was the case in Friday’s emergency request, the majority did not explain their decision.
In order to secure Republican votes for nearly $100 billion in military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan last year, Biden and the Democrats attempted to broker a “border package” that would greatly expand the immigration deportation apparatus while providing no additional protections for immigrants under CHNV or TPS.
Now, less than 150 days into the Trump administration, some 900,000 workers and their families are at risk of being kidnapped by a militarized immigration Gestapo, detained in a for-profit prisons, and sent to a country they may not have been to in years—or ever—where they may face political persecution, gang violence, or US-backed private militarized repression.
As of this writing no prominent Democrat, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, has issued a statement denouncing the court’s latest anti-immigrant ruling.
While Trump’s plans for mass deportations have broad support in the Supreme Court and in both big business parties, millions of people throughout the United States are outraged over the daily injustices, disappearances, and kidnappings of their friends, family, and co-workers.
The arrest of 20-year-old Dylan Josue Lopez Contreras earlier this month has provoked mass outrage in New York City. The young man from Venezuela, along with his mother and two younger siblings, entered the US legally using the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) One app under the Biden administration.
Despite following the legal process, Dylan was arrested when he showed up to a mandatory immigration hearing on May 21.
“It seems like a dirty game on their part,” Raiza, Dylan’s mother, told Chalkbeat. “When someone appears in front of a judge, it’s because they don’t have any criminal record, they want to do the right thing,” she said, adding, “The only thing he wants is to study.”
Dylan had been attending high school at Ellis Prep Academy and was in the process of seeking asylum. Although he had already graduated from high school in Venezuela, he enrolled at Ellis to improve his English in preparation for hopefully going to college.
Following Dylan’s arrest, approximately 500 New York City high school students walked out on Tuesday to protest his detention. On Wednesday, 23 people were arrested outside the U.S. Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan while protesting the arrest of Dylan and other immigrants.
All workers must take a stand in opposition to the bipartisan mass deportation campaign. The militarized measures and trampling of due process rights used against immigrants today will be used against striking workers and all those who protest the rule of the financial oligarchy.
The defense of immigrants requires a complete break from both big business parties and the capitalist system, which is predicated on the outmoded and historically bankrupt nation-state framework. In a world of globalized production, workers must be allowed to live and labor wherever they choose, with full citizenship rights.
Claims by the ruling class that there is “no money” to provide food, housing, and education for all are blatant lies. The trillions in tax cuts proposed by Trump and the Republicans—and the $1 trillion war budget supported by both parties—must be redirected to meeting the social needs of the population. This can only be achieved through a mass movement of the working class, organized on the basis of international socialism and the construction of a world economy geared toward the needs of the many, not the privileges of the few.