Supreme Court will hear Trump’s bid to end legal protection for up to 1.3 million immigrants

WASHINGTON— The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments over whether the Trump administration can revoke the temporary protected status of about 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrian immigrants.

TPS allows people currently in the United States to legally reside and work here if they cannot safely return to their home country due to a sudden emergency such as war or natural disaster. The humanitarian aid program, enacted by Congress in 1990, has since been used by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has ended such protections for immigrants from 13 countries. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians were consolidated into a single case, v. Mullin Doe, The judges will hear it on Wednesday.

The high court’s decision could have far-reaching consequences for all 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries designated for TPS at the beginning of this administration. That’s because the federal government maintains that decisions about the program are almost entirely immune from court review.

In response to a request for comment, an anonymous Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote: “Interim means temporary, and activist judges legislating from the bench will not have the final say.”

Lower courts have repeatedly found the administration’s actions improper.

“What we’re seeing is a clear act of gamesmanship by the government to shield all of TPS’s decision-making from any oversight,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who served as counsel in the Syrians case and challenged five of the firings in other cases. “They have created a process of stripping more than a million people of their human protection rights to justify the results they seek.”

inside Trump administration objection Lawyer Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to grant or terminate temporary protected status for troubled countries and prohibited judges from intervening.

He drew attention to a provision as follows: “There is no judicial review of any determination. [secretary] Regarding the designation, termination or extension of the designation of a foreign state.”

Citing that hands-off provision, Trump’s lawyers obtained brief emergency orders last year that allowed the administration to strip legal protections from nearly 600,000 Venezuelans. In this case, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quickly reversed the extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in.

The circumstances surrounding the Syrian and Haitian cases are different. Advocates for immigrants argue that the administration has failed to conduct the necessary process to accurately assess each country’s conditions.

They point to emails sent in July from a Homeland Security official to a State Department official. The Homeland Security official listed the TPS designations that came in for review: Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. In response, a State Department official wrote: “I confirm that the State has no foreign policy concerns regarding the termination of these TPS designations.”

The State Department’s travel advisories for both countries warn people not to travel to either country due to the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. US citizens are advised to prepare a will.

for Syria, The recommendation document addresses active armed conflict since 2011. for haiti, It says the country has been under a state of national emergency since March 2024.

But the Federal Register notices announcing the terminations state that domestic conditions have improved sufficiently. Warning for SyriaFor example, it says, “The Minister has determined that, although some sporadic and periodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal security of returning Syrian citizens.”

If the government loses, Homeland Security officials will need to reevaluate TPS decisions in consultation with the State Department and make a decision based entirely on the country’s circumstances.

In this case, the government could start over and find that TPS is no longer guaranteed if the process supports it.

In a court friend Brief summary led by immigration law academics At Georgetown and Temple universities, they explained that before the advent of TPS, similar forms of humanitarian assistance were determined by the executive branch “without reference to any legal criteria or constraints and with little or no explanation as to why some countries receive protection for citizens while others do not.”

They wrote that with the TPS in 1990, Congress sought to end this “unlimited discretion.” Instead, the statute requires the secretary of Homeland Security to terminate the TPS if the review finds that the conditions justifying the appointment no longer exist. Otherwise, the law says, “it will be extended”.

“The purpose of the TPS law was to depoliticize humanitarian decisions,” said MacLean, the ACLU attorney. “Secretary Noem has completely undermined this fundamental goal in all of her TPS decisions.”

Ahilan Arulanantham, who championed the Syrian cause on Wednesday, said that if the government wins, “it also means they can probably give TPS to countries that don’t deserve it.” Arulanantham, co-director of the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, represented the National TPS Alliance in a separate case during this administration and Trump’s first administration.

Senior Homeland Security and State Department officials from the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations I gave a brief summary He argued that the Trump administration’s termination of TPS for Syria and Haiti “is not based on evidence and is a sharp departure from past interagency practices.”

Haiti was first designated for TPS after a massive earthquake devastated the country in 2010 and was redesignated due to subsequent natural disasters and gang violence. In November, Noem announced that she would end the TPS for Haiti, effective February 3. Noem wrote in the Federal Register that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti” that prevent Haitians from returning safely.

But even so, he continued, “it is still necessary to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status because it is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”

A Homeland Security spokesman said TPS for Haiti “was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, but previous administrations have used it that way for decades.”

Meanwhile, the spokesman wrote that Syria “has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for almost two decades” and that “allowing Syrians to remain in our country is against our national interests.”

In her Federal Register notice for Syria, Noem added that pursuing the TPS designation would “complicate the administration’s broader diplomatic relations with Syria’s transitional government,” undermining peacebuilding efforts.

The Supreme Court will consider the question of whether the Secretary of Homeland Security can use national interest as justification to revoke TPS. Lawyers for TPS holders believe that the decision to cancel TPS should depend solely on country circumstances.

Syria and Haiti between countries The Trump administration also stopped processing all immigration benefits for this. If TPS protections expire, these immigrants will become vulnerable to detention and deportation, even if they are eligible for other types of assistance.

Lawyers for TPS owners say the firings were also motivated by racial animus. They point to several statements Trump has made over the years, including his false claim that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. “I probably have AIDS” and Haiti are among these countries. “shithole countries” It would permanently pause immigration from here.

Among those affected is a 35-year-old Haitian woman who has lived in the United States since 2000 and is raising her four U.S. citizen children in the Southern state. The woman requested to be identified with the middle and last initials BB due to her concern about her immigration case.

After graduating high school, BB entered nursing school but could not continue because she did not qualify for financial aid. She later said getting TPS allowed her to become a certified nursing assistant, and she now works as a medical coordinator in addition to owning a nail salon and three properties.

Although BB’s TPS remains active due to court proceedings, his driver’s license expired on February 3 and he has had to rely on friends and ridesharing to get around since then while constantly requesting renewal.

He said he was most worried about his children. If they were sent back to Haiti, he said he would leave them in the United States for their own safety.

“It’s like planning your death,” he said. “I’m 35 and I already have a will; not because I’m going to die, but because of the situation.”

In a meeting with reporters, lawyers and advocates, a Syrian man said that he received his master’s degree in the United States and is currently working in the healthcare sector. The man, identified by a pseudonym, said he and his wife were afraid of what their future would be like.

“TPS has given us something we haven’t had in years: a place to settle and a moment to grieve,” he said, later adding: “Telling Syrians to return immediately is not policy, it’s abandonment.”

There is broad support among the public for TPS and other humanitarian programs. According to a survey the company conducted last month Equis Research, 68 percent of Latino voters and 65 percent of non-Latino voters support fighting to restore legal protections to those who lost their temporary protected status or asylum protections as a result of the current administration’s actions.

At the beginning of this month, Parliament voted in favor of a bill This would require new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to re-designate Haiti for TPS. Among those who crossed the political aisle to support it were 10 Republicans and independent Rep. Kevin Kiley of Rocklin, Calif., who caucused with Republicans. The measure faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

In an interview with The Times, Kiley said his vote was about common sense and humanity.

“This is especially dangerous for people returning to places where the gangs that ravaged the country lurk outside the airport in Port-au-Prince,” he said, referring to Haiti’s capital.

Because most people won’t return willingly, Kiley added, “all you’ll actually do is remove work permits for 350,000 people who will mostly stay in the country, no longer be able to work, and may become more dependent on public assistance in the states where they’re eligible.”

At the same time, Kiley said the TPS system is not working as intended because many of the so-called temporary designations are outdated.

The system needs to be reformed, he said. “But these are all separate and different from the things we do with people who already have that title.”

Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.