Supreme Court allows Trump to end protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants
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- Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian migrants and 6,100 Syrian migrants, overturning lower court blocks on the terminations.
- Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the TPS statute bars judicial review of termination decisions, and that the Haitian plaintiffs were unlikely to prove racial discrimination under the Fifth Amendment's equal-protection clause.
- Justice Elena Kagan dissented, writing that race entered the President's decision to remove Haitians: 'The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President's resolve to remove Haitians from this country.'
- DHS General Counsel James Percival celebrated the ruling on X, calling TPS 'de facto amnesty' and declaring 'This is a win for the rule of law and common sense.'
- In a separate 6-3 ruling, the Court held migrants cannot apply for asylum until they physically set foot on US soil, effectively reviving the Obama-era 'metering' policy from 2016 that Biden had rescinded in 2021.
- Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented on the asylum ruling, warning the consequences are 'predictable': 'More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.'
- Thursday's decision is likely to have implications for TPS holders from other countries beyond Haiti and Syria, the source notes, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of additional migrants.
Why it matters: The decision strips legal protection from roughly 356,100 Haitian and Syrian migrants who now face deportation to countries the source describes as facing 'humanitarian collapse.' The precedent is likely to extend to TPS holders from other nations, potentially hundreds of thousands more. Local governments that filed amicus briefs warned of family separations and economic disruption across American communities.
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