The US Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the path for the Trump administration to strip humanitarian protections from roughly 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants, leaving them vulnerable to deportation.
In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the conservative majority reinforced the administration's strict immigration agenda. The ruling may accelerate White House plans to dismantle similar safety nets for individuals from other nations.
“This is a tremendous win for the Trump Administration. Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what President Trump has always maintained: temporary protected status is, by definition, temporary," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement quoted by NBC News.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito asserted that lower courts overstepped their boundaries by challenging executive decisions. He noted that federal law explicitly bars courts from reviewing Department of Homeland Security rulings on whether to end or extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
Alito also dismissed allegations that revoking protections for Haitians was driven by bias, stating the referenced remarks were not “overtly racial" and were “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people."
Conversely, Justice Elena Kagan issued a sharp dissent, accusing the majority of downplaying discriminatory rhetoric.
“The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country," she wrote.
Without TPS, impacted individuals face standard deportation procedures, though they can pursue alternative paths like asylum. The ruling sparked profound concern among advocates and recipients.
The decision builds on two high court rulings from last year that allowed the administration to revoke protections for 600,000 Venezuelans. Government lawyers successfully argued that those cases established a binding precedent.
Enacted in 1990, the TPS program provides up to 18-month blocks of legal status and work permits to foreign nationals whose home countries are decimated by conflict or natural disasters. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated the designations after concluding that conditions in Haiti and Syria had improved.