Supreme Court weighs Trump’s effort to end TPS for Haitians, Syrians : NPR

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President Trump could carry out mass expulsions of people who have lived legally In the United States, many of them for more than a decade, if he prevails in two cases brought before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

At issue is the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows eligible people to live and work in the United States if they cannot return to their home countries due to natural disasters, armed conflict and other “extraordinary or temporary conditions.” Congress passed the TPS program in 1990 to establish criteria for screening, processing, and registering people fleeing such disorders.

Since then, every president, Republican and Democratic, has adopted this agenda, except Trump. He tries to get rid of it.

The vehicle is the temporary status previously granted to eligible people from two countries: Haiti, where a devastating earthquake killed more than 300,000 people in 2010 and left the country with roving gangs, cholera outbreaks and no functioning government – conditions that persist today – and Syria, where a relatively small group of 7,000 people were granted protected status, while a civil war and Israeli bombing continue in parts of the country.

How TPS Works

Trump has never hidden his views on these countries. As he told an audience last year: “Why do we only take people from shithole countries? Right? Why can’t we get people from Norway, Sweden. Just a few.”

TPS does not work like most other immigration benefits. This only applies to individuals who have lived legally in the United States continuously since the country’s most recent TPS designation. They are eligible to stay here, but according to strict criteria.

“They have to go through a vetting process that involves biometric data, a background check and a comparison with all government databases,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents the Syrians in Wednesday’s case. “Two offenses, you’re out.”

Additionally, people with TPS must renew their subscription every 18 months and start the process again.

Do the courts play a role?

The Trump administration, however, claims that none of this matters because, under the 1990 TPS Act, none of these judgments are subject to judicial review. As the administration noted in its briefs, the law “covers the waterfront,” barring judicial review of all provisions of the law.

Twenty-one Republican attorneys general are supporting the administration, including Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. He notes that under TPS, some of the 17 countries designated too dangerous to return to have been on the protected status list for more than a decade.

“Temporary protected status was never intended as a de facto “Amnesty,” says Kobach. “This status, as its name suggests, is temporary.”

Lawyers for the Haitians and Syrians counter that the provision barring judicial review applies only to one section of the law, not the rest. And they claim the Trump administration failed to follow procedures mandated by the TPS program and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The APA, as it is called, was enacted 80 years ago and sets the rules of conduct for how federal agencies develop, issue and enforce regulations. It requires agencies to follow specific and transparent procedures and, importantly, it provides a framework for judicial review of agency actions to avoid arbitrary decisions.

DHS findings criticized

Specifically, in the case of Haitian nationals, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem terminated Haiti’s TPS status in response to an executive order from Trump. She gave two reasons: First, that there are no extraordinary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitians with TPS status from returning home safely. And second, even if Haiti were unsafe, ending TPS protection would still be necessary because “it is contrary to the national interest.”

Noem made similar findings for Syria, citing problems with vetting Syrian nationals and highlighting two Syrians under criminal investigation, neither of whom had TPS.

Regardless, the administration notes that, traditionally, the Supreme Court has shown great deference to executive branch immigration claims because they involve “critically important” issues of “national security and public safety.”

Lawyers for TPS recipients, however, will tell the court that the findings in both cases were entirely “pretextual,” meaning a sham. They claim that rather than conducting the required in-depth consultations with the U.S. State Department on the situation in these countries – consultation required by law – the State Department rubber-stamped the DHS secretary’s findings with a two-sentence statement.

A claim that does not involve immigration law

The Haitians have a claim that does not relate to immigration. They claim the Trump administration discriminated against them because of their race. And they cite in particular some of Trump’s most incendiary remarks, for example, falsely claiming during a September 2024 presidential debate that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, “are eating the dogs. The people who came in are eating the cats. They are eating the pets of the people who live there.”

The Supreme Court, however, has refused to consider such language in previous cases, calling it “political.”

In the lower courts, both the Haitians and the Syrians won their TPS case, on a preliminary basis. But the Supreme Court has criticized lower court judges in other immigration cases for leaving their lane. And before this case, the court’s conservative majority largely deferred to the administration.