Bonus 150: A Tale of Two (Other) Immigration Cases

A deeper dive into two of the pending emergency applications from the Trump administration in immigration cases that have received far less attention, but are no less important.

Welcome back to the weekly bonus content for “One First.” Although Monday’s regular newsletter (and unscheduled issues) will remain free for as long as I’m able to do this, I put much of Thursday’s bonus content behind a paywall as an added incentive for those who are willing and able to support the work that goes into putting this newsletter together every week. I’m grateful to those of you who are already paid subscribers, and I hope that those of you who aren’t will consider a paid subscription if and when your circumstances permit.

For obvious reasons, most of the attention on (and at) the Supreme Court this week has been focused on today’s oral argument in the birthright citizenship cases—in which the Trump administration is not asking the justices to uphold Trump’s controversial effort to narrow who’s entitled to citizenship simply by being born in the United States, but rather to narrow (or even eliminate) “nationwide” injunctions in these cases and others. As I’ve explained in prior posts, that would be a massively significant holding in its own right.

But among the other pending emergency applications from the Trump administration are two in loosely related but distinct immigration cases that, to date, have received far less public attention—Noem v. National TPS Alliance and Noem v. Doe. In the post that follows, I provide an overview of what these cases are about (“temporary protected status” and immigration “parole,” specifically); why the Court’s rulings respecting them will affect far more people than the birthright citizenship cases; and the ominous precedents it would set if the Court were to grant the government’s emergency applications in either (or both) cases.

In a nutshell, the Trump administration is trying to create grounds for immediately being able to remove more than one million non-citizens who have been living in the United States (and, in many cases, working) for years with the government’s explicit permission. And its central argument in support of these moves is that courts can’t review them at all.

Even among folks who follow the Supreme Court closely, these cases have largely flown under the radar—as the Court is simultaneously dealing with the birthright citizenship cases; DOGE access to Social Security data; the Alien Enemy Act cases; the rest of this term’s “merits” docket; and so on. Indeed, this crowding out of other major cases is one of the many costs of how overloaded the Court’s emergency docket has become. But as I explain below the fold, there are a host of reasons why we ignore these cases, specifically, at our—and more than one million immigrants’—peril.

For those who are not paid subscribers, we’ll be back on Monday (if not sooner) with our regular coverage of the Court. For those who are, please read on.