US Supreme Court allows Trump to end protected status for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians

The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Thursday that the Trump administration can terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haiti and Syria, exposing roughly 356,000 people who have lived and worked in the United States for years to potential detention and deportation. The justices split along ideological lines, with the conservative majority shielding the Homeland Security secretary’s decision from judicial review.

The decision

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The majority held that the 1990 Immigration Act prevents courts from reviewing a secretary’s final determination on TPS designations. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, arguing that procedural compliance remains reviewable.

Haiti was first designated for TPS after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people; Syria was added in 2012 following the outbreak of civil war. Both countries have repeatedly been found too dangerous for safe return by previous administrations. The Trump administration, however, moved to end both designations.

Communities react

In Brooklyn’s Little Haiti, the ruling turned excitement over Haiti’s World Cup appearance into anxiety. Yves Vilus, executive director of the Erasmus Neighborhood Federation, said his phone rang all morning.

“They know where we are. Will ICE be knocking?”

Immigration advocates said the court has become a rubber stamp for mass deportation. Elora Mukherjee of Columbia Law School called the administration’s system “a deportation machine” and described the court’s behaviour accordingly.

“In most cases, the Supreme Court has been a rubber stamp for Trump's mass deportation agenda.”

Wider consequences

Beyond the roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians directly affected, the ruling is likely to influence dozens of pending lawsuits from TPS holders of 17 other nations. An estimated 1.3 million people currently hold TPS. They could face the loss of work permits and legal status if the administration applies the same reasoning.

Haiti350,000

Syria6,000

Other 17 TPS countries (at risk)1,300,000

Haiti

350000 people

Syria

6000 people

Other 17 TPS countries (at risk)

1300000 people

Data from the article text

A pattern of rulings

Thursday’s decision was the third immigration ruling this week that favoured the administration’s enforcement-first agenda. Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and lawyer for the Syrian plaintiffs, said the pattern was clear.

“The Supreme Court has consistently ruled against the rights of immigrant communities in important cases in the last several years, and this case fits that pattern.”

Safety concerns

Humanitarian groups pointed out that US government travel warnings still advise against travel to Haiti due to violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping. Tirana Hassan, CEO of Doctors Without Borders USA, said Haitians should not be returned.

“These are not conditions to which people should be returned.”

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired months earlier, had declared the countries safe after what a Washington Post opinion column described as a perfunctory two-sentence consultation with the State Department. The court’s textualist reading, however, blocked any review of that process.