Supreme Court weighs Trump attempt to remove protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants
WASHINGTON — Tackling one strand of the Trump administration’s hard line, the Supreme Court on Wednesday will weigh its efforts to strip away legal protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the United States.
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If the administration wins the case, it will be able to move forward with its plan to strip Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, from about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. In the meantime, the protections remain in place.
President Donald Trump’s administration has also sought to revoke TPS for people from other countries, including El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Afghanistan. The Supreme Court’s decision could impact ongoing litigation in lower courts involving countries including Somalia, Myanmar and Ethiopia.
Last year, the Supreme Court, in two separate decisions, allowed the administration to revoke the same type of legal status for 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States. The Trump administration argued in court papers in the new cases that these actions set a precedent that lower courts should have applied to Haitian and Syrian immigrants as well.
The government argues that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decisions on revoking TPS designations cannot be reviewed in court.
The court will consider this and other questions regarding whether Noem conducted the required consultations with the State Department to determine whether conditions in both countries had improved. The plaintiffs also allege that the Haiti decision was made for unlawful discriminatory reasons.
The TPS program, in place since 1990, provides humanitarian assistance to people from countries hit by war, natural disasters or other catastrophes. Recipients have legal status in the United States and may apply for work authorization for up to 18 months, subject to extensions.
Haitians have been able to apply for TPS since a catastrophic earthquake shook the country in 2010. Syrians became eligible in 2012 during a civil war when the country was led by dictator Bashar al-Assad, who fell from power in 2024.
Noem concluded that Haiti and Syria no longer met any of the requirements for protected status, saying conditions in both countries had improved.
The State Department is currently telling Americans not to travel to either country, with both included on its “do not travel” list.
“Haiti has been under a state of emergency since March 2024,” the department said. “Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include theft, carjacking, sexual assault and kidnapping for ransom. »
As for Syria, the department says that “no part of the country is safe from violence.”
Without protected status, affected individuals are subject to deportation through the normal legal process. But they can seek other ways to stay in the United States, such as seeking asylum.
A Washington-based judge concluded in February in a case brought by TPS holders that Noem did not follow correct procedures in ending Haiti’s legal status and said there was evidence the decision was based on “anti-black and anti-Haitian animus.”
The judge notably highlighted an
In the other case, a federal judge in New York ruled in November in favor of seven Syrians who had already obtained legal status under the program or had applied for it.
In both cases, the appeals courts refused to stay the lower courts’ decisions.
Urging the court not to intervene, lawyers representing the Haitian challengers said the people would “risk death” if returned to the Caribbean country. They also pointed to comments Trump made during the 2024 election, baselessly claiming that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets, as evidence of alleged racial bias.
Lawyers for the Syrian plaintiffs cited the ongoing instability in neighboring Iran to explain how dangerous the security conditions in the region are, and questioned why the Trump administration had moved to court urgently, seeking such an urgent ruling, when some Syrians with TPS have lived in the United States for more than a decade.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to immediately allow it to revoke TPS for both sets of plaintiffs, but the justices in March postponed a decision on that front, deciding instead to hear oral arguments and issue a detailed ruling on the legal issues.
As of March 2025, about 1.3 million people from 17 countries suffered from TPS, according to the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group.
Earlier this month, the House broke with Trump by voting to reinstate TPS for Haitians, with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats. But the Senate has yet to act and the White House has pledged to veto any legislation.
