Supreme Court lets Trump end temporary protections for Haitian, Syrian migrants
The Trump administration can cancel temporary humanitarian protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants living legally in the United States, the Supreme Court found on Thursday, a decision that could allow the government to deport hundreds of thousands of people starting this year.
The effects are likely to be immediate and ripple beyond Haitians and Syrians to affect approximately 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries who had temporary protected status when President Donald Trump took office. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has sought to eliminate protections for 13 of those countries, including Haiti, Syria and several others that the State Department considers highly dangerous.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the conservative justices found that courts do not have authority to review determinations by DHS to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
The majority also found that the Haitians were unlikely to succeed on their claim that racial animus had motivated the decision to end their TPS status.
As evidence, the Haitian plaintiffs had cited Trump’s false claims that Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, were killing and eating their neighbors’ pets—as well as his assertion that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said those remarks did not prove the administration’s decision was driven by race. The administration’s justifications were race-neutral, the majority concluded, with an “obvious antipathy” toward past administrations’ handling of TPS.
“Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago … especially those concerning Haiti and Haitian immigrants to this country,” Alito wrote. “But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
Justice Elena Kagan sharply disagreed in her dissent, joined by her liberal colleagues, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community,” Kagan wrote. “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.”
Congress created temporary protected status in 1990 to shield immigrants in the United States from being deported to countries engulfed in armed conflict, a natural disaster or another extraordinary crisis, allowing them to work legally in the U.S. for up to 18 months.
Applicants to the program cannot have serious criminal records, and they must pay fees and pass a background check.
DHS can renew the protections—and it has, multiple times, for several countries. That has provoked criticism from Trump and his base for allowing the provisional status to last for years, even decades.
More than 353,000 Haitian migrants have received TPS protections. The designation was first given in 2010 following Haiti’s devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake and then extended to include those who arrived later. Haiti has faced multiple crises, including the 2021 assassination of its president and widespread gang violence. In February 2025, then-DHS Secretary Kristi L. Noem made good on Trump’s promise to limit the program, kicking off the process to cancel temporary protections.
As the justices considered the Haitians’ case in June, a Haitian police official and his family were kidnapped in broad daylight amid a resurgence of violence in the country.
In September, Noem terminated TPS for a little more than 6,000 Syrian immigrants. They had received protections starting in 2012 during the violent crackdown by Syria’s leader at the time, Bashar al-Assad. Because Assad’s regime fell in 2024—and the country’s brutal civil war had subsided to “sporadic, isolated episodes of violence”—Noem determined that Syrians could return to their home country.
The case delivered a key win in Trump’s push to limit immigration. The administration has not only sought to deport undocumented immigrants but also to narrow the legal pathways for immigrants to reside in the U.S.
This term, the justices also weighed other cornerstones of Trump’s immigration agenda, including his attempt to end the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, the principle that almost everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen. Trump attended oral arguments for that case in April, highlighting the case’s importance.
The justices also decided Thursday that migrants on the Mexican side of the southern border are not entitled to apply for asylum..
The heart of the Trump administration’s argument in the TPS cases was a fairly technical one: that courts could not review determinations by the administration that immigrants from Haiti and Syria no longer needed protections. They pointed to the text of the statute, which reads: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary of homeland security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.”
Lawyers for the government said strong evidence demonstrating that countries like Haiti remain dangerous cannot refute a determination by the homeland security secretary that the immigrants must return there.
Attorneys for the immigrants countered that government officials must follow a set of procedures before making a determination. They argued that Noem failed to properly consult with other agencies in making her decision.
As evidence, they pointed to the State Department’s advice that U.S. citizens should not travel to either Haiti or Syria because of risks of terrorism, kidnapping and armed conflict. These advisories recommend that visitors establish “proof of life” protocols in case they are taken hostage “to confirm that you are being held captive and alive.”
But the majority sided with the government in finding that the TPS statute barred judges from reviewing a determination to end TPS for the Syrians and Haitians immigrants.
“This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” Alito wrote, referring to the “no judicial review” language.
Kagan disagreed, explaining that the decision implies that the government does not need to follow the procedural steps laid out in other parts of the statute.
“After today, a Secretary can announce to the world that she didn’t consult with anyone-more, that she didn’t evaluate country conditions at all-before making, extending, or terminating a TPS designation,” she wrote. “And the courts will be powerless to intervene, even though Congress loaded up the TPS statute with requirements about the (altogether different) way the Secretary is supposed to make her decision.”
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