The US Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, has ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s push for mass deportations, giving it the authority to revoke protections for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
In a 6-3 vote, the court concluded that the law does not allow courts to review executive decisions concerning Temporary Protected Status (TPS). This ruling could affect more than 1 million people.
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TPS protects beneficiaries from deportation and grants them the right to work in the United States. This status is granted temporarily to immigrants whose safety is at risk in their countries of origin because of war, natural disasters, or other “emergency” circumstances.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was replaced in March by Markwayne Mullin, revoked TPS for about 15 nationalities, meaning that at least 1 million people face deportation. Final decisions have not yet been issued in other court appeals.
This status had remained in effect for Haitians and Syrians until today, when the Supreme Court issued its decision on the matter.
According to conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the lower courts exceeded their authority when they examined the legal validity of the government’s decisions. In his majority opinion, he also rejected the claim by Haitian lawyers that revoking TPS for citizens of the poorest country in the Americas was driven by the president’s “racial hostility toward non-white immigrants.”
“None of the statements made by the president or the secretary of Homeland Security was openly racist,” Alito said.
When the court heard arguments from both sides in April, the debate focused on President Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks about the program’s beneficiaries, whom he said came from “shithole” countries. The administration’s legal adviser, John Sauer, insisted that Trump’s comments were related to “problems of crime, poverty and dependence on welfare” and that they had been presented by the media “out of context.” He also argued that the law provides for “no judicial review” of Department of Homeland Security decisions about who qualifies for TPS.
“The government is interpreting the law as a blank check,” said Achilan Arulananthan, a lawyer for Syrian immigrants. “The issue is being able to massively deport people who have done nothing wrong to countries that remain dangerous,” he warned, recalling that the State Department advises American travelers to Syria “to leave behind a DNA sample and make a will before they depart.”
In addition to Haitians and Syrians, the Supreme Court’s decision puts at risk the rights of more than 1 million immigrants from 17 countries that until recently relied on TPS, the nongovernmental organization Global Refuge commented.
