WASHINGTON — The nation’s highest court opened the door Thursday for the Trump administration to eliminate a humanitarian protection shielding hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants from deportation, delivering yet another victory for the president’s aggressive immigration agenda.
In a 6-3 decision driven by the court’s conservative bloc, the Supreme Court reversed rulings from federal judges in New York and Washington, D.C., who had previously blocked the administration from ending Temporary Protected Status — commonly known as TPS — for more than 350,000 people from Haiti and approximately 6,100 from Syria. The court’s three liberal justices voted against the majority.
TPS is a federal designation that allows people from nations devastated by war, natural disasters, or other serious crises to live and work legally in the United States when conditions in their home countries make it dangerous to return. The U.S. first extended TPS to Haitians following a major earthquake in 2010 and to Syrians after civil war broke out in their country in 2012. The State Department currently advises Americans against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, pointing to widespread violence, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito authored the ruling, concluding that federal courts do not have the authority to review the administration’s TPS-related decisions. That finding could effectively shut down future legal challenges to TPS revocations for immigrants from any country. Alito wrote that the law governing TPS “plainly bars” such judicial oversight.
Alito also addressed a racial bias argument raised by Haitian TPS holders who sued the administration, writing that they were unlikely to win their claim that the administration’s actions violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.
Interestingly, Alito noted that the plaintiffs themselves weakened their own racial bias argument by pointing to what he called a “strong, race-neutral explanation for Haiti’s termination: namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past.”
Thursday also brought a second immigration win for the Trump administration at the Supreme Court, again in a ruling written by Alito. The court sided with the administration’s authority to turn away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border when officials determine that crossing points are too overwhelmed to handle additional claims — a policy referred to as “metering.” The administration has indicated it may seek to bring that policy back after it was discontinued by Trump’s Democratic predecessor.
The TPS legal battle represented another chapter in the ongoing examination of presidential power, with the Supreme Court traditionally deferring to the executive branch on matters involving immigration, national security, and foreign policy. Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has moved aggressively to roll back both legal and illegal immigration. The court’s conservative supermajority previously allowed the administration to end TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.
During his 2024 reelection campaign, Trump pledged to revoke TPS protections for Haitian immigrants, doing so after making widely condemned false claims about Haitian migrants in Ohio. The administration has consistently argued that TPS was always intended to be a short-term measure.
The ruling carries broad consequences, potentially affecting all 1.3 million immigrants from the 17 countries currently holding TPS designations.
Immigration advocacy organizations expressed deep concern following the decision.
“This is a deeply painful day for hundreds of thousands of families who have built their lives here lawfully, paid taxes, cared for our communities, and who now face the prospect of losing everything,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the organization Global Refuge. “Importantly, the court did not find that Haiti or Syria is safe. It found that the question is beyond the reach of judicial review. Our immediate concern is what happens to these families and children should they be forced back to the dire circumstances that have long prevented their safe return.”
The legal challenges at the center of the case stemmed from actions taken last year by Kristi Noem, who was then serving as Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, when she revoked TPS designations for both Syria and Haiti, declaring the protections contrary to U.S. national interests. Noem’s TPS decisions remained in effect even after Trump dismissed her from her post in March.
Groups of Syrian and Haitian TPS holders filed separate class-action lawsuits against the administration, arguing that Noem’s actions — combined with the broader pattern of ending humanitarian designations across multiple countries — pointed to a deliberate effort to dismantle the TPS program altogether.
A Washington-based federal district judge had earlier found that the administration’s actions against Haitian TPS holders were likely driven at least in part by “racial animus,” concluding it was probable that Noem had predetermined her termination decision “because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling pushed back on that conclusion.
Lower courts had previously ruled against the TPS terminations, finding that administration officials failed to follow required procedures for evaluating conditions in a country before ending its TPS designation. The administration maintained it had followed proper protocols and argued more broadly that courts have no authority to second-guess its TPS determinations — a position the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed.
