The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration can cancel Temporary Protected Status for up to 350,000 Venezuelans in the United States.
The order from the bench halts a lower-court ruling that kept the protective status in place for Venezuelans.
Temporary protected status is designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security and allows foreigners already in the U.S. to stay temporarily because returning to their native country would be unsafe.
"From what we can tell, this is the single largest action in modern American history, stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status," said Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer and professor in the Center for Immigration Law & Policy at UCLA.
The decision is a win for President Trump, whose administration has moved to end deportation protections for several groups.
The Department of Homeland Security announced last week that temporary protected status will end for Afghans in the U.S. in mid-July.
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Earlier this month, the administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.
"I think the concern is that if the courts allow these swift revocations, the results or the consequences of people in TPS status who have essentially the rug yanked out from under them is that they're already on a list" immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said.
Immigration advocacy groups also say the countries losing TPS designation still aren't safe for people to return home to them.
"This administration has itself said about the situation in places like Venezuela, in places like Haiti, and the facts on the ground make clear we should be keeping temporary protected status in place, not fast-tracking the end," said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, a bipartisan organization that works on immigration policy.
Schulte says because of the ongoing legal process, it's unclear what happens next for Venezuelans with temporary protected status.
"There are hundreds of thousands of people who woke up today and hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens who are family members and friends of these people, who don't exactly know what this means," Schulte said.
A hearing is set for next week in front of the district judge who initially paused the administration's plans.
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