Trump asks SCOTUS to end protections for half-million migrants
Programs protecting Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion, Latin Americans escaping political instability, Afghans who helped U.S. forces and others could be at risk.
The rights we once took for granted are under review – through the courts. Get the full story now – with All Rise News, you’ll get information you can use to push back!
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to halt Biden-era protections for 530,000 immigrants who escaped global upheaval in Latin America.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who filed the motion seeking to stop these protections, served as Trump’s criminal defense attorney, leading the arguments that led the Supreme Court’s unprecedented immunity decision last year.
Sauer now wants to restore Trump’s executive order ending Joe Biden’s program Parole Processes for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV). The Trump administration also wants to terminate Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) and Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), which protect those who fled Russia’s invasion and Afghans who helped U.S. forces at great personal risk.
Support Ukraine? Live in New York City? Ride a bike?
The advocacy group Razom for Ukraine hosts 4th Annual Solidarity Bike Ride, a 14-mile spin starting in front of the beloved local restaurant Veselka on May 18 at 8 a.m.
There are events across the U.S. and globally, plus volunteering opportunities here.
The current Supreme Court application seeks to overturn a lower court’s order specifically related to the CHNV program, related to the four Latin American countries. Separate legal challenges to save the other programs remain pending.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani paused Trump’s executive order, finding it wasn’t in “the public interest to summarily declare that hundreds of thousands of individuals are no longer considered lawfully present in the country.”
Talwani required the Trump administration to undertake a “case-by-case review,” rather than a wholesale withdrawal of parole for a half-million people.
Sauer’s application calls former Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s granting of parole en masse, combined with the court’s prohibitions on its revocation, a “perverse one-way ratchet.”
On a related note: The new Pope
The new pope, Robert Francis Prevost (now Leo XIV), hasn’t tweeted much in the past few years, but those social media posts have now generated some news coverage about his disapproval of J.D. Vance’s views on immigration now that he’s become the first pontiff from the United States.
Sure, the social media post was a headline from a religious news outlet, but there’s good reason to believe the pope’s views align with those of the author. It wasn’t an isolated post.
Read The Daily Beast’s coverage here.
‘This is an order from Trump’
After a Russian asylum-seeking family warned that their deportion was illegal, immigration officers told them: “This is an order from Trump,” according to a blockbuster report from two human rights groups.
Human Rights First and Refugees International made those words the title of their latest 18-page report.
The report details what they believe to be “systemic and grave human rights abuses” by the Trump administration inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities.
"The conditions in CBP custody amount to a humanitarian and legal crisis,” Human Rights First’s director of research, analysis and refugee protection Christina Ascencio said in a statement. “Our report finds that asylum seekers—many of them children—are facing medical neglect, psychological abuse, and prolonged detention in unsafe, unsanitary conditions.”
The groups say that Trump’s pattern of partnering with human rights abusers in El Salvador and Libya for immigration purposes is escalating.
“Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pursuing agreements with additional third countries to send asylum seekers and migrants. These include Uzbekistan, which the United States seems to have paid to accept the returns of Kazak and Kyrgyz nationals ‘expected to continue on to their home countries.’ It is reportedly negotiating arrangements with additional countries mired in conflict, such as Ukraine and Sudan, and with records of severe human rights violations such as Libya, along with likely diplomatic assurances of little worth from autocratic leaders of these countries that people sent by the United States will not be tortured there. It is also negotiating further removals of non-Rwandan people to Rwanda, where it recently sent a resettled refugee from Iraq.”
Meanwhile, journalists in El Salvador face charges for reporting on Trump-friendly strongman Nayib Bukele’s gang ties, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Speaking of “Strongmen”…
On Friday, I will be speaking with New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in a Zoom conversation set to take place at 1 p.m. ET. A scholar of fascism and authoritarianism, Ruth literally wrote the book on “Strongmen,” and that’s why she’s one of the first experts I interviewed for context in the wake of Trump’s attack on the 2020 election culminating in the U.S. Capitol insurrection.
The conversation is only for subscribers of her Substack Lucid.
Be on the lookout: All Rise News will announce our own upcoming Substack Lives soon.
What is wrong with the Trump administration ? Does the staff come up with ways just to outdo each other in cruelty ? Can’t we just continue being kind to people who are already here on a temporary status ? Just don't invite any new people. I want to thank the people of Afghanistan for all your help you gave our military but too bad-we don’t need you anymore. How can the attorney request this on behalf of President Trump to the Supreme Court and sleep at night?
On a more unbelievable note : Vice President Vance has been publicly scolded by two Roman Catholic Popes. My best advice to him would be to join a cloistered monastery that allows eighteen hours of prayer a day for forgiveness. I think this would be his only chance to escape eternity in hell.