Trump asks Supreme Court to revoke legal status of 500,000 immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to revoke temporary legal status to more than 500,000 immigrants that had been granted it by the Biden administration.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is seeking to end the Biden program that allowed 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to live and work in the United States for up to two years.

Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled the administration could not sweep away each person’s status without an individualized determination.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a court filing that the judge had “nullified one of the administration’s most consequential immigration policy decisions.”

Sauer also argued that Talwani and other federal judges have no authority to rule on the issue under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.

Noem, he said, has “broad discretion over categories of immigration determinations” and the law “precludes judicial review” of those decisions.

The filing is the latest in a flurry of cases brought to the Supreme Court by the Trump administration as a result of policies being blocked by lower courts.

A similar case, involving an effort to revoke temporary protected status for a separate group of Venezuelans, is also pending at the court.