By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from four countries.
The emergency appeal asks the justices to halt a lower-court order keeping in place legal protections for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The Republican administration argues that the decision wrongly intrudes on the Department of Homeland Security’s authority.
“The district court has nullified one of the administration’s most consequential immigration policy decisions,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote.
The order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston blocked the Trump administration from putting an early end to the immigrants’ temporary legal status.
Her ruling in mid-April came shortly before their permits were due to be canceled, setting them up for potential deportation.
Talwani said that immigrants in the program who are in the United States legally now face an option of “fleeing the country” or staying and “risk losing everything.” She said the government’s explanation for ending the program was “based on an incorrect reading of the law.”
The case comes as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on immigration and dismantle Biden-era policies that created new and expanded pathways for people to live in the United States, generally for two years with work authorization.
The appeal is the latest in a string of immigration-related emergency appeals the Trump administration has made to the Supreme Court.
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