Washington — The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on whether the Trump administration can revoke Temporary Protected Status for approximately 350,000 Haitian and 6,100 Syrian immigrants.
TPS allows people who are already in the United States to live and work legally if they are unable to safely return to their home country due to a sudden emergency such as war or natural disaster. The humanitarian program, enacted by Congress in 1990, has since been used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has ended such protections for immigrants from 13 countries. The court challenges on behalf of the Haitians and Syrians have been consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, On which the judge will hear on Wednesday.
The high court’s decision could ultimately have a cascading effect on all 1.3 million immigrants from the 17 countries who were designated for TPS at the beginning of this administration. This is because the federal government is arguing that decisions related to the program are almost completely free from review by the courts.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, who declined to be named, wrote in response to a request for comment, “Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from active judges making law from the bench.”
Lower courts have repeatedly ruled the administration’s actions unreasonable.
“We’re seeing clear gamesmanship on the part of the government to shield all TPS decisions from any oversight,” said Amy McLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who is counsel in the Syrians’ case and other cases challenging the five terminations. “They have fabricated a process to justify their goal, which was to strip humanitarian security from more than a million people.”
In Trump administration’s appeal Solicitor General D. John Sawyer argued that Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to grant or terminate temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.
He pointed to a provision that says: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the (Secretary) regarding the designation of a foreign state, or the termination or extension of a designation.”
Citing this practical provision, Trump’s lawyers won summary emergency orders last year, allowing the administration to strip legal protections from about 600,000 Venezuelans. In that case, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem immediately reversed an extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in.
The circumstances of the Syria and Haiti cases are different. Advocates for immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the process necessary to properly evaluate the conditions of each country.
They point to an email sent by a Homeland Security official to a State Department official in July. Homeland Security officials listed TPS designations coming up for review – Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. In response, the State Department official wrote: “I confirm that State has no foreign policy concerns with terminating these TPS designations.”
State Department travel advisories for both countries caution people against traveling due to the risk of terrorism, kidnapping, and widespread violence. US citizens are advised to prepare a will.
for Syria, The advisory cites the active armed conflict since 2011. For Haiti, It says that the country is in a state of national emergency from March 2024.
But the Federal Register notice announcing the expiration said conditions in the country had substantially improved. notice for syriaFor example, it says, “The Secretary has determined that, while some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian citizens.”
If the government loses, Homeland Security officials would have to reevaluate TPS decisions in consultation with the State Department and make decisions based solely on country conditions.
In that case, the government could start over, and still find that TPS is no longer needed – if the process makes it to that point.
in a friend of the court Brief led by immigration law scholars At Georgetown and Temple universities, he reported that before TPS came into existence, similar forms of humanitarian relief were determined by the executive branch “without reference to any statutory criteria or constraints, and with no explanation as to why citizens of some countries received protection while others did not.”
With TPS in 1990, Congress sought to end that “unfettered discretion,” he wrote. Instead, the law requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to terminate TPS if the review finds that conditions justifying the designation no longer exist. Otherwise, the law says, it is “extended.”
ACLU attorney McLean said, “The purpose of the TPS statute was to depoliticize humanitarian decisions.” “Secretary Noem has completely undermined that fundamental goal in all of her TPS decisions.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, arguing the Syria case 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 Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, has represented the National TPS Coalition in separate litigation during this administration and Trump’s first administration.
Top Homeland Security and State Department officials from the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations filed a brief Arguing that the Trump administration’s termination of TPS for Syria and Haiti “was not based on evidence and was a marked departure from previous interagency practices.”
Haiti was originally designated for TPS in 2010 after a major earthquake devastated the country and was re-designated due to subsequent natural disasters and gang violence. In November, Noem announced that she would end TPS for Haiti effective February 3. She wrote in the Federal Register that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti” that prevent Haitians from returning safely.
But even if that were the case, he added, “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 spokesperson said that TPS for Haiti was “never intended to be a true amnesty program, yet previous administrations have used it that way for decades.”
Syria, meanwhile, “has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades,” the spokesperson wrote, “and allowing Syrians to remain in our country is contrary to our national interest.”
In a Federal Register notice for Syria, Noem said that maintaining its TPS designation would “complicate the Administration’s broader diplomatic engagement with the Syrian transitional government” by undermining peace-building efforts.
The Supreme Court will consider the question of whether the Secretary of Homeland Security can use the national interest as a reason to rescind TPS. Advocates for TPS holders believe that any decision to cancel TPS should depend solely on the circumstances of the country.
Syria and Haiti are between countries For which the Trump administration has also stopped the process of all immigration benefits. If their TPS protections expire, they will become vulnerable to immigrant detention and deportation, even if they are eligible for other types of relief.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sawyer argued that Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to grant or terminate temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.
(Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images)
Lawyers for TPS holders say the dismissals were also motivated by racial animus. They point to various statements by Trump over the years, including his false claim that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, that he “Probably has AIDS” And Haiti is one of them “Useless Country” Due to which he will permanently stop migration.
Those affected include a 35-year-old Haitian woman who has lived in the US since 2000 and is raising her four US citizen children in a southern state. The woman requested to be identified by her middle and last initials BB out of concern for her immigration case.
After graduating high school, Bibi entered nursing school, but was unable to get in because she did not qualify for financial aid. She said getting TPS later allowed her to become a certified nursing assistant, and now she works as a medical coordinator while also owning a nail salon and three real estate properties.
Although Bibi’s TPS remains active due to the court proceedings, her driver’s license expired on February 3 and since then she has had to rely on friends and rideshare, repeatedly requesting renewal.
He said that he is most worried about his children. She said if they were sent back to Haiti, she would leave them in the United States for their safety.
“It’s like planning your death,” she said. “I’m 35 and I already have a will – not because I’m going to die but because of the situation.”
On a call with journalists, lawyers and advocates, a Syrian man said he earned his master’s degree in the US and now works in the health care industry. The man, who identified himself only by a pseudonym, said he and his wife were afraid of what their future would hold.
“TPS gave us something we haven’t had for years: a place to settle down and a moment to mourn,” he said, later adding that “telling Syrians to go back right now is not policy – it is abandonment.”
Among the public, there is widespread support for TPS and other humanitarian programs. According to a survey conducted by the firm last month equus research, 68% of Latino and 65% of non-Latino voters support fighting to give legal protections back to people who have lost their Temporary Protected Status or asylum protection as a result of the current administration’s actions.
Earlier this month, the House voted in favor of a bill This would require new Homeland Security Secretary Markway Mullin to re-designate Haiti for TPS. Among those crossing the political aisle to support it were 10 Republicans and Rep. Kevin Kelly, an independent from Rocklin, Calif., who is aligned with Republicans. The measure faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
In an interview with The Times, Kiely said his vote was about common sense and being humane.
“It is especially dangerous for those returning,” he said, referring to the Haitian capital, where the gangs that ravaged the country are waiting outside the airport in Port-au-Prince.
And because most won’t return voluntarily, Kiely said, “What you’re actually doing is removing work authorization from 350,000 — some people who will mostly remain in the country, who may no longer be able to work and may end up being more dependent on public assistance in the states where they’re eligible.”
At the same time, Kiely said, the TPS system has not worked as expected because most so-called temporary designations tend to last too long.
“The system needs to be reformed,” he said. “But all of this is separate and distinct from what we do with people who were already given that designation.”
Times staff writer David G. in Washington Savage contributed to this report.
