The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to revoke temporary legal status granted to more than 500,000 migrants from four countries — with two liberal justices blasting the decision, saying it would cause “irreparable harm” to the migrants.

On Friday, the court granted an emergency application that was filed by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. The decision clears the way for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of migrants while a case over the legality of ending the program continues.

President Trump’s homeland security department had cancelled temporary protected status for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

The Biden administration first instituted the special protection for migrants from the four countries in 2022 and 2023, allowing them to temporarily live and work in the United States if they passed security checks and proved they had sponsors who could provide them with housing.

A federal judge in the District of Massachusetts temporarily blocked the cancellation of the program following a lawsuit that claimed the sudden revocation would have devastating consequences on the individuals involved. 

The Department of Justice says the protections were always meant to be temporary and said the lower court judge’s suggestion that each case should be decided on a case-by-case basis was impractical. It would be a “gargantuan task,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented because they said the case is still pending and the Trump administration will seek to “inflict maximum predecision damage” on the migrants ahead of the court decision. 

Justice Jackson wrote that the decision is having “the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”

She said the migrants now face two “unbearable options”: They can leave the United States and face “dangers in their native countries,” or stay in America and risk imminent removal at the hands of government agents.

“At a minimum, granting the stay would facilitate needless human suffering,” Justice Jackson wrote.

The Supreme Court previously allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case, the Associated Press reported.