Supreme Court ruling on deportation protections is ‘bad news’ for every TPS recipient

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A Supreme Court decision unwinding deportation protections for Haitians and Syrians spells trouble for all recipients of temporary protected status (TPS), regardless of their home country.

The Trump administration has been chipping away at TPS, a status prior governments have given to nationals from 17 countries after determining it wouldn’t be safe to deport them due to fallout from political unrest or in the wake of natural disasters.

But in a 6-3 ruling Thursday, the Supreme Court said it has no ability to second-guess the decision by the Trump administration to rescind TPS for Haitians and Syrians, two countries that remain ravaged by violence.

All six of the court’s conservatives backed the majority decision, while its three liberals dissented.

It’s a decision that runs counter to many lower court rulings, which found the Trump administration failed to follow the process prescribed by Congress for rescinding the status and cited remarks from both President Trump and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in determining the decision was motivated by racial animus.

The ruling leaves 1.3 million people hanging in the balance, particularly as the administration pushes to end TPS for 11 additional countries.

“The decision — I don’t want to understate and sugarcoat its importance — it’s definitely bad news,” Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, said in a call with reporters.

“The court doesn’t say that what the Trump administration has done in TPS decisionmaking is lawful. It doesn’t say that these decisions comply with the TPS statute. Instead, what it says is that the statute doesn’t give the courts any power to correct illegal decisions made under the TPS statute, and so it doesn’t matter whether or not the secretary properly complied with Congress’s rules, or [consulted] with the State Department, or [took account] of country conditions,” he said.

“It’s important to recognize that what that means is that it hands to the administration and to the far-right wing of the anti-immigrant movement an important victory.”

Under the decision, roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians will lose their work authorization and protections from deportation once the ruling takes effect in a month.

The Trump administration called the ruling “a tremendous win.”

“Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what President Trump has always maintained: temporary protected status is, by definition, temporary. It was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency and it is committed to the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. The Trump Administration continues to lawfully end the egregious abuses to our immigration system,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

The Trump administration has systematically moved to strip TPS for all but four countries for which the status is set to lapse later this year.

“We know what Donald Trump will do,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) said at a press conference with other TPS supporters the day the ruling landed.

“Today, it’s Haiti and Syria. Which country will be next? Will it be one? Will be two, or will it be all of them? So this really does put everything at risk.”

In each case, the Trump administration has argued conditions have sufficiently improved to allow nationals with TPS to return home.

That argument is particularly questionable with regard to Haiti and Syria, where the State Department has issued Level 4 travel advisories warning Americans to “do not travel” to either country.

Haiti hasn’t had a stable government since its leader was assassinated in 2021 and has been under a national emergency since 2024. Gangs dominate the country, and crime and kidnappings are widespread.

Syria is still reeling from years of civil war and a power vacuum after its leader was deposed, with warring factions still engaged in conflict. The State Department warns that “no part of Syria is safe from violence.”

Both countries have a limited U.S. governmental presence because of the heightened security risks.

“The case today has devastating consequences, not just for the two cases that are before the court, but stands to severely limit the avenues for relief in the other cases that are proceeding,” Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which represented Syrians in their case, said the day the ruling was released.

“The Trump administration did not analyze country conditions, they did not follow the proper procedures, they did not base their decisions on the proper considerations.”

Race was also a factor in the case. In lower court rulings on Haiti, judges determined the administration was motivated by racial animus in stripping the protections, citing remarks from Trump and Noem.

When Noem sought to lift TPS for both Haiti and Venezuela, a concurring opinion at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted that both Noem and Trump repeatedly made statements that “were overtly founded on racist stereotyping based on country of origin.”

That did not go unnoticed by the court’s dissenting liberal minority.

“In fact the statute allows judicial review of whether the Secretary adhered to the procedures it mandates—which is what the plaintiffs dispute here,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, noting the established process for rescinding a TPS declaration.

“Second, the majority claims to see no evidence that race played any role in the Haiti decision. But the evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat.”

Review of their remarks has also featured heavily in other TPS rulings, such as in a court tasked with reviewing the effort to scrap the protections for Venezuelans.

“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” California-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen wrote in a ruling last year temporarily blocking the administration’s actions.

The Supreme Court’s decision remands the case back to lower courts for further review but also lays out clear obstacles for both similar and new arguments.

Arulanantham said it would make it very tough in this case and other TPS cases to argue the administration was motivated by race.

“What they’re finding is that it’s not likely that you could prevail based on this evidence, not that you can’t prevail based on this evidence,” he said, while cautioning, “It’s important to stress this makes the bar very, very high.”

Trump had forwarded conspiracy theories that Haitian migrants kill and eat people’s pets. He also said Haitians were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

“You don’t need a law degree to know that poisoning the blood is a racist term, and yet, the Supreme Court suggests that it’s not,” Arulanantham said. “It’s conceivable that we could go back into the courts and try to find another way to stop their illegal TPS decisionmaking, but it will be extremely hard and it may be impossible.”

In the wake of the ruling, TPS allies in Congress have demanded a legislative solution, which includes bills that would broadly protect the status holders as well as one piece of legislation recently passed in the House dedicated to preserving the status quo for Haitians.

The Haiti legislation was unusual in that it was bipartisan, while the court’s ruling has renewed calls for the Senate to vote on the matter.

“Conditions in Haiti remain extremely dangerous due to rampant gang violence, political instability, and a severe humanitarian crisis,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said in a statement after the ruling that referenced the State Department travel advisory.

“Just like it is not safe for Americans to go to Haiti, it is not safe to force Haitians to return at this current moment in time. With our southern border now secure, we have the ability, and the responsibility, to pursue practical, targeted solutions that uphold the rule of law and recognize the harsh realities on the ground in Haiti.”

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Kristi Noem

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