Migrants in Tri-State face deportation after Supreme Court revokes protections
JACKSON HEIGHTS, Queens (WABC) -- A major, and controversial Supreme Court ruling handed down Friday, will affect more than half a million immigrants who currently live in the U.S. legally, including thousands in New York City.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration has the authority to strip them of their legal status, making them eligible for deportation.
The decision will likely send thousands of migrants into hiding in New York City, if it hasn't already.
The impact is sending waves of fear through the city's immigrant community, and beyond.
"This is going to harm people, not just here in the city, the state of New York, but across this country, people who have been building their lives, working and, you know, contributing to our country," said Murad Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition.
The decision applies to recent immigrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba, affecting an estimated 532,000 men, women and children from nations in crisis.
When they arrived, those migrants were granted temporary legal protection by the Biden administration, known as Humanitarian Parole, which allowed them to settle here and find work. All had local sponsorship.
"The people in this program have been given status by the U.S. government," said Jennifer Gordon, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. "And so, in the current administration's drive to create fear, to deport as many people as possible, they're now taking status away from people who have it in order to be able to deport them."
It comes less than two weeks after the high court allowed the administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status from 350,000 other Venezuelan migrants.
"In total, within the past two weeks, the Supreme Court is allowing this administration to strip over a million people of their legal status in this country," Awawdeh said.
On Friday, the administration praised the court's decision, insisting that mass deportation is what Americans voted for.
"Nobody stopped Joe Biden from flooding this country with foreign invaders, and I will say to you that it is and we celebrate the fact that 500,000 of those can now be deported because the Supreme Court justly stepped in and stopped these crazy lower court injunctions," said Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Bill Ritter will discuss the implication of the Supreme Court decision with the head of New York City Council's Immigration Committee Chair Alexa Aviles, and also the head of the New York Immigration Coalition on Up Close, this Sunday morning at 11 a.m.
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