Miami's Justice Jackson writes blistering dissent to Supreme Court's CHNV ruling

Miami Herald

2 days ago

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was educated in Miami public schools and Harvard University, is the newbie on the high court.
But Jackson, who joined the court in June 2022 after her nomination by President Joe Biden, has not been shy about speaking her mind.
To wit: her eloquent and trenchant dissent in the nine-member court's decision on Friday. She vehemently disagreed with the majority's ruling to vacate a federal judge's order that stopped the Trump administration's plan to prematurely end a humanitarian parole for a half million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States.
Without parole protections during their legal dispute with the administration, Jackson wrote, the immigrants are at risk of being deported back to dangerous countries.
Jackson, who was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the dissent, wrote that 'the Court has plainly botched' the assessment of whether the Trump administration would suffer 'irreparable harm' as it claims sole authority to terminate the humanitarian parole program 'en masse.'
Keeping the parole program in place while the case makes its way through the court system, she wrote, 'requires next to nothing from the government,' which she stressed would suffer no harm from waiting. Friday's ruling, she added 'undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly a half million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.'
But Jackson, known as a formidable debater at Miami Palmetto Senior High School in the 1980s, was just clearing her throat.
She also noted that the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals who were allowed into the United States by the Biden administration came from 'conflict-ridden countries' and received 'parole status' for up to two years — a policy that President Donald Trump terminated on his first day in office on Jan. 20.
The groups sued the Trump administration in federal court in Boston, where in April a judge granted a preliminary injunction preventing the end of the parole program and their possible deportation while their legal challenge is heard. But on Friday, the Supreme Court lifted the judge's protection, leaving them vulnerable to removal as they pursue immigration benefits, such as asylum and green cards.
In Jackson's view, the Supreme Court reached the wrong conclusion through flawed legal analysis after evaluating which side would suffer the most if the justices decided to 'stay,' or put on hold, the federal judge's protective order for the paroled immigrants from the four countries.
'The bottom line is this: Our decision to issue a stay (or not) involves more — much more — than merely forecasting the eventual victor; after all, the underlying litigation is designed for and dedicated to determining that,' Jackson wrote. 'What stays are about, at their core, is an equitable assessment of who will be harmed, and to what extent, during the litigation process.'
Jackson also pointed out that the ruling presents the immigrants involved with a terrible choice: They can choose to leave the United States and 'confront the dangers in their native country,' or they can remain here after their parole is terminated and 'risk imminent removal at the hands of government agents.
'Either choice creates significant problems for [the paroled immigrants] that far exceed any harm to the government,' she wrote. 'Yet, somehow, the Court has now apparently determined that the equity balance weighs in the government's favor, and, I suppose, that it is in the public's interest to have the lives of a half million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.'
Jackson's dissent is not the first time she has disagreed with her colleagues on the Supreme Court on a major immigration case during Trump's second term as president.
Earlier this month, Jackson was the only justice whose name appeared on the court's momentous decision that allowed the Trump administration to revoke deportation and work protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.