How the Supreme Court Made Legal Immigrants Vulnerable to Deportation

The government knows their names.

Their fingerprints have been scanned into government computers. The Department of Homeland Security knows where most of them live, because the immigrants in question — more than 500,000 of them — reside in the United States legally.

But two new Supreme Court decisions have left them open to deportation, an abrupt turn for a population that has been able to remain in the country by using legal pathways for people facing war and political turmoil at home.

“Thousands of people — especially Haitians, Cubans and Venezuelans — instantly shift from ‘lawfully present’ to ‘deportable,’” said Jason Houser, a former official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Biden administration.

Now, with their protections revoked while legal challenges move through lower courts, many immigrants have found themselves in a vulnerable position. Because so many of them have shared detailed information with the government, including addresses, biometrics and the names of their sponsors, they could be easy to track down at a moment when the Trump administration is looking for ways to deport people quickly.

“Ending the C.H.N.V. parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department. She was using an abbreviation for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the countries in the humanitarian parole program targeted by the Trump administration.

Whether and how aggressively the administration might move to begin rounding up people whose legal protections have been revoked remains unclear, though officials signaled several months ago that they feel they have the authority to do so.

“It’s chaotic and unnecessary, and we’re already receiving panicked calls and emails, and the crescendo will only grow,” said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy group that has challenged last week’s rulings in court.

“The Supreme Court has effectively greenlit deportation orders for an estimated half a million people, the largest such de-legalization in the modern era,” she said.

The Supreme Court acted in both cases on emergency applications by the Trump administration, which has pushed for more arrests and deportations, even for people who are in the United States legally. The administration argues that some immigration programs are being abused and allow people into the country who would otherwise be turned away.

The court gutted two such programs in the last couple of weeks, humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status, which together have shielded more than a half-million people from deportation. The decisions were unsigned and gave no reasoning, which is typical of emergency proceedings.

Mr. Houser said the court decisions amount to “a seismic shift” in the number of people the Trump administration can target for deportation. Some immigrants affected by the rulings have been in the country less than two years, which means they could be deported using an expedited system that sidesteps the normal immigration court process.

The decisions come as top White House officials have been publicly complaining about the pace of deportations. The problems are due in part to the logistical constraints of immigration enforcement, including the lack of resources and capacity to detain people.

But there is another factor that often hamstrings ICE officers: the difficulty of finding their targets. Many immigrants live under the radar or have moved from their last known address long ago.

That’s why ICE is taking aggressive new measures, including detaining people at immigration courts when they show up for hearings. The tactic is a significant break from past practice, when immigration officials largely steered clear of courthouse arrests out of concern that they would deter people from complying with orders.

Tracking down people who entered the country legally is yet another escalation.

George Fishman, a former homeland security attorney in the first Trump administration, noted that while many of the immigrants could qualify for expedited removal, others would end up in an immigration court system that is plagued by delays.

For those who find themselves in court, “it’s not going to mean the immediate removal of anybody,” he said.

But Trump administration officials have signaled that they intend to use expedited removal whenever they can. In a public register notice in March announcing that it would end the humanitarian parole program, the Trump administration said it was hampering D.H.S.’s ability to deport people quickly.

Expedited removal typically is used on people who are picked up at the border, as a way to quickly turn them back without court proceedings. But Mr. Trump expanded it significantly so that ICE agents can use the process for anyone who has been in the United States less than two years.

In its March notice, the administration said expedited removal prevents “further straining of the overburdened immigration court system.”

Andrea Flores, who was a Biden-administration immigration official, said the notice was not subtle.

“Their own justification for terminating this legal status now is to be able to put them in expedited removal, since the majority arrived less than two years ago,” she said. “The Supreme Court’s decision is callous, and will embolden this administration to go further in singling out Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans, penalizing them for complying with our immigration laws and returning them to grave harms.”