Supreme Court Allows Trump to End TPS for Haiti, Syria Migrants

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from Haiti, Syria and other nations now face possible deportation after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Trump administration may terminate their Temporary Protected Status. The decision restores executive authority to end the humanitarian program that had let recipients live and work legally in the United States for more than a decade.

The Court addressed challenges to the administration’s revocation of TPS designations originally granted after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and Syria’s 2012 civil war. In Mullin v. Doe, the majority held that federal courts lack jurisdiction to block the terminations on a class-wide basis under the Immigration and Nationality Act. A separate 6-3 ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado clarified that asylum seekers standing on the Mexican side of the border have not yet “arrived” in the United States for purposes of certain statutory protections.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority in the TPS case. He noted that prior administrations had ended TPS designations more quickly without similar litigation. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurrence in the asylum case, emphasized statutory limits on lower-court injunctions and warned that some relief granted below may have exceeded congressional authority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The rulings leave roughly 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians without the legal protections that had shielded them from removal. Administration officials described TPS as a temporary measure never intended as a path to permanent residency. Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates said the decisions would separate families, remove essential workers and expose people to unsafe conditions in their home countries. Congress has not passed legislation to extend the designations.

Lower courts had previously blocked the terminations. The Supreme Court’s action ends those injunctions and signals that challenges to future TPS decisions will face the same jurisdictional barriers.