The Supreme Court’s decision to greenlight President Trump’s rollback of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 300,000 Venezuelans has thrown a major wrench into the left’s immigration agenda—and now, legal experts are zeroing in on the programs that helped bring those migrants in the first place.
According to former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, one Biden-era parole program was not just ill-conceived, but outright illegal.
Appearing on Fox News, McCarthy blasted the so-called CHNV parole policy, which allowed migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the country without traditional visas. Under Biden, it was billed as a “humanitarian” measure. But in reality, it created a backdoor for hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals to gain U.S. entry without undergoing proper vetting or securing lawful immigration status.
“The parole program I think was illegal,” McCarthy told Fox News anchor Aishah Hasnie. “This is a quintessentially political determination—the law makes clear the courts shouldn’t even be involved.”
McCarthy’s comments come just days after the Supreme Court struck down a lower court order that had blocked Trump’s efforts to revoke TPS for Venezuelans. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenter, as the 8-1 ruling cleared the way for the administration to begin removals.
That victory is prompting deeper scrutiny of what Biden left behind—and whether the courts will uphold more of Trump’s sweeping changes.
McCarthy noted that federal courts should never have entertained a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James aimed at blocking Trump’s action. “We have cities under strain—education, law enforcement, and welfare systems—because of millions of illegal aliens Biden let in. You’re buying a huge problem,” he warned.
Trump wasted no time after returning to office. In January, he issued executive orders targeting illegal immigration, re-designated foreign gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as terrorist organizations, and launched a full-scale review of refugee admissions.
McCarthy said Biden’s CHNV program, which permitted parole entry for migrants unlikely to qualify under legal standards, was never grounded in proper statutory authority. A federal judge in Massachusetts even issued an injunction to stop Trump from deporting those who came under CHNV—a move legal scholars are already calling tenuous.
“It doesn’t mean it was a wise move or good policy move. But I think legally speaking this was not one of the more objectionable of the Biden programs,” McCarthy said of TPS. “There are many of those.”
The America First Policy Center previously described CHNV as a legal sleight of hand that effectively allowed mass migration without Congress. Now, under Trump’s watch, it’s being dismantled piece by piece.
The legal fight over CHNV is just beginning. But the momentum has clearly shifted.
The Trump administration is taking aggressive steps to not only stop illegal immigration, but to reverse the policies that enabled it. And with Supreme Court backing, the White House now has the upper hand to reassert control over a broken immigration system.
If McCarthy is right, CHNV could be next in line for the chopping block. And for Democrats hoping to keep Biden’s border policies alive through legal technicalities, the road ahead just got much tougher.
