This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s partnership with NOTUS, a nonpartisan news organization that covers government and politics with the fresh eyes of early career journalists and the expertise of veteran reporters.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Trump administration has full discretion to end temporary protections for immigrants, putting hundreds of thousands back at risk of deportation.
The Thursday ruling is another legal defeat for migrants previously granted deportation reprieve and work authorization through Temporary Protected Status, a program President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is dismantling.
The court previously allowed the Trump administration to end TPS for Venezuelans through its shadow docket, but this decision goes further. It says that the DHS secretary can end TPS for countries without the ability for judicial review.
While the April oral arguments focused on TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, the order has repercussions for all immigrants protected under the program. Nearly 1.3 million immigrants had TPS before then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem started ending them for 13 countries.
The justices rejected the idea that racial animus played a role in the termination of TPS for Haitians.
>>READ MORE: Berks’ tight-knit Haitian community braces for end of federal immigration protections
“None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion in Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, two cases the Supreme Court considered in tandem.
“Viewing all the relevant evidence, Miot respondents are unlikely to prove that race was a motivating factor in the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation, and it follows that they are not entitled to interim relief on their equal protection claim,” he continued.
The Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians came after years of negative statements from President Donald Trump and other top officials about people from both countries Trump referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country and promoted a false rumor about Haitian immigrants eating dogs. He’s also long said Syrian immigrants are dangerous, tying them to terrorism.
The three-decade-old program created by Congress is supposed to protect immigrants from being deported to countries deemed too unsafe because of armed conflict, natural disasters or other humanitarian crises. There is no limit to the amount of times the federal government can renew TPS designations and some have lasted for decades, such as for El Salvador.
Noem moved to end TPS designations for Haiti and Syria even though the State Department advises Americans against visiting the countries due to ongoing violence and conflict.
The administration has argued TPS has been extended for too long.
“The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense,” DHS general counsel James Percival wrote on X after the ruling.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion the two other liberal justices joined, arguing that courts should be able to review whether the DHS secretary had followed the statutory steps before reaching the decision to terminate TPS.
“Respectfully, I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane,” she wrote.
While the dissenting opinion acknowledges that the program doesn’t grant permanent legal status, Kagan wrote that the administration isn’t supposed to cut off protections the way it has.
“Miot, Doe, and the other plaintiffs before us deserve better than today’s decision,” Kagan wrote. “But the law prevents the program from ending as it likely did here—without the required consultations about country conditions and, as to Haiti, with impermissible race-based considerations tainting the decision.”
Attorneys representing the Haitian and Syrian immigrants argued that federal judges had the authority to make sure the secretary had consulted with other agencies, such as the State Department, to determine whether the conditions at the TPS-designated countries had improved enough.
“I don’t want to understate and sugarcoat its importance, it’s definitely bad news,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor representing the Syrian TPS holders, in a press conference after the ruling.
He said successfully finding other legal paths to challenge the terminations would be extremely hard, if not impossible.
“The implication of this is that at least most of the claims that have been litigated to challenge this administration’s sort of illegal war on TPS are now foreclosed,” Arulanantham said.
Other attorneys handling TPS cases and advocates stressed that lawmakers could step in to protect the immigrants who could soon face deportation, an avenue extremely unlikely under a Republican-controlled Congress.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who co-led a House bill that would extend TPS for Haitians, said Thursday’s decision would create a crisis in hospitals and nursing homes, given the number of Haitian TPS holders working in the health care sector. Ten Republican lawmakers supported the legislation in April.
“I’m asking the administration to allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months, if the revocation of TPS moves forward,” Lawler wrote in a post on X.
Last week, attorneys representing Haitian immigrants asked the Supreme Court to send the case back to the lower courts in light of evidence showing DHS career staff originally recommended the extension of TPS, and that the State Department hadn’t issued a recommendation on the matter. The plaintiffs sought more time through the unusual request, arguing the new documents showed Noem’s decision was preordained.