What Does Separation of Powers Mean for Immigration?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns separation of powers in the federal government. The Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch are co-equal branches of the federal government. This means that none of the three has the power or authority to tell either of the other two branches how to do their job.

The Executive Branch cannot tell the Legislative Branch how to write bills or the Judicial Branch how to decide court cases. The Legislative Branch cannot tell the Executive (POTUS) what the foreign policy should be. For the same reason, the Judicial Branch cannot force their agenda onto the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch. The only power or authority of the Judicial Branch is to determine what is constitutional and what is not.

Over the past four months, rogue lower judges in the Judicial Branch have tried to make foreign policy or immigration decisions and other presidential decisions. They are acting as a judicial coup attempting to stop or at least slow down the agenda of the Trump administration. One of the areas where the rogue judges have overstepped their judicial authority has to do with undoing a Biden executive order that admitted illegal aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela into the United States temporarily under a parole program. Virginia Allen wrote about this court case and published it at The Daily Signal. 

The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to revoke temporary protected status for 500,000 illegal aliens living in the U.S.

In a 7-2 ruling on Friday, the justices lifted a lower court’s order that barred the Trump administration from deporting illegal aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who entered the U.S. under the Biden administration parole program.

The court’s decision comes in response to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s efforts to end the Biden-era parole policy that allowed migrants from the four countries to fly directly into the U.S. and be transported into the interior of the [country].

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to “terminate all categorical parole programs,” including the “processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.”

In March, the Department of Homeland Security issued a notice announcing the official termination of the program, effective on April 24, but a federal judge blocked DHS from revoking legal status for the illegal aliens in the U.S. under the parole program.

The Trump administration’s action was challenged in a federal court in Massachusetts, which stayed DHS’s action. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1^st Circuit upheld the federal court’s decision. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to undo the lower court’s stay.

The Supreme Court’s order allows the Trump administration to move forward with plans to terminate the legal status of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela migrants while an appeal is pending before the 1^st Circuit Court of Appeals….

The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday comes just two weeks after the justices issued an order allowing the Trump administration to proceed with plans to strip temporary protected status from thousands of illegal aliens from Venezuela living in the U.S.