Supreme Court reviews Trump cancellation of Haitian, Syrian protected status

(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is considering whether the Trump administration unlawfully ordered hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. from Haiti and Syria to return home, abruptly cancelling their legal status out of alleged racial animus and without proper consideration of risks to their safety and the nation’s economy.

The outcome in the pair of cases being argued before the court will directly affect the futures of roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and about 6,000 Syrians.

The Trump administration contends in court documents that the immigrants were never intended to be permanent residents and that cancellation of their temporary status is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States.”

Those immigrants were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under separate government declarations first issued more than a decade ago and later renewed multiple times, most recently by the Biden administration.

TPS status, established by the Immigration and Nationality Act, provides work authorization and protection from deportation – as long as the Homeland Security Secretary certifies that a foreign country is unsafe because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010 and has since been hit by subsequent natural disasters, political unrest following a presidential assassination, and waves of rampant gang violence.

Syria devolved into civil war around 2011 and has been considered by the U.S. government a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades. A major earthquake in 2023 plunged the country into a deeper economic and humanitarian crisis.

“There is no functioning healthcare system for the disabled and elderly to return to, no reliable housing infrastructure, no legal framework that can guarantee anyone’s safety,” said Syrian TPS-holder and health care worker Adam, a pseudonym used to protect his identity.

Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in separate acts last year, moved to terminate TPS status for Haiti and Syria by certifying that, in her estimation, conditions on the ground in those countries were sufficiently safe for immigrants to return.

Those decisions were blocked by lower courts, which concluded that Noem did not follow proper procedures for cancelling TPS and may have also unlawfully discriminated against the immigrants on the basis of race.

The Supreme Court is now reviewing those findings.

“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “The statute requires, in our view, that there be consultation with the State Department.”

Immigrant advocates and some American business groups, particularly in the healthcare and senior caregiving sectors, say TPS holders play an indispensable role in the nation’s labor force and contribute billions of dollars in tax revenue to state and federal governments.

Immigrants make up 28% of the U.S. long-term care workforce – nearly double their share of the entire labor force, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

More than 113,000 Haitian TPS holders work in Florida alone, which is home to a high proportion of America’s seniors, according to the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

“The effects of [DHS’s] hasty TPS terminations are too serious to ignore,” a senior living community and ageing services provider jointly wrote the Court in an amicus brief. “The government has largely failed to address the impact that stripping thousands of caregivers of work authorization will have on elderly and medically vulnerable adults in U.S. communities.”

The Trump administration contends that courts have no authority to second-guess the DHS determinations on whether countries should qualify for TPS or not. They note that Congress, in creating the special status, put a time limit on it of 18-months, subject to extension.

“Congress, in short, prescribed substantive and procedural guardrails to keep TPS designations temporary,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote the Court in a brief, “but left further accountability to the political process, not federal courts.”

Sauer also disputed claims that the TPS cancellations rested on racial animus, calling it a “legal and factual nonstarter.”

The cases are the latest high court test of President Trump’s bold assertion of executive authority in his second term. The justices are already preparing to rule on his authority to redefine birthright citizenship, fire members of independent agencies, and remove a member of the Federal Reserve.

The Supreme Court last year handed the Trump administration a temporary win when it allowed them to terminate TPS for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals as litigation continues.

TPS status for Haitians and Syrians remains in place for now, but many immigrant advocates worry that if the Court allows the Trump administration to cancel the status, protections for immigrants of other countries may also end. The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end protections for at least 11 countries since President Trump took office.

The Court is expected to hand down a decision by the end of June.

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