In a 6–3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court said President Trump can end Temporary Protected Status without judicial review, giving the administration a path to revoke TPS for Haitians and Syrians living legally in the United States.
For Haitians and Syrians who have built lives in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, Thursday’s decision landed like a door shutting.
By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the President has “virtually unrestrained” power to end the Temporary Protected Status program, known as TPS. The court’s conservative majority held that under the TPS law. the President can terminate the program with authority the courts cannot review.
TPS was created in 1990 by Congress for migrants who have been fully vetted and are eligible to live and work legally in the U.S. but who cannot return safely to their home countries due to natural disasters. armed conflicts. and other extraordinary conditions. The Department of Homeland Security designates which countries qualify for TPS.
That matters because the court’s ruling gives the administration a direct mechanism to remove legal protection from people who have been living and working in the U.S. for years—some for decades—without the usual opportunity to challenge the decision in court.
The cases in question involve Haiti and Syria, two of the countries designated for TPS. Haiti has 330,000 displaced persons living legally in the United States under the program, while Syria has roughly 3,800.
The decision also carried an immediate warning from the U.S. State Department. Americans are currently told in the strongest terms not to travel to these countries due to dangers including crime. terrorism. kidnapping. unrest. and limited health care. With the Supreme Court’s ruling, however, the protections tied to TPS can be ended without judicial review.
For many migrants, the stakes are stark. The ruling means that migrants living legally in the U.S. under TPS who are from those countries will likely revert to illegal status. That would put their jobs at risk and expose them to deportation, with many forced to leave behind American-born children.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority said in its reasoning that the TPS law grants the President unreviewable authority to end the program. without intervention from the courts. Writing for that majority, Justice Samuel Alito concluded that the president’s authority cannot be checked through judicial review.
This was not the first attempt to narrow TPS during Trump’s second term. The Trump administration tried to strip TPS from 13 of the 17 countries that had it before the second term began. For the four remaining countries—El Salvador. Lebanon. Sudan. and Ukraine—TPS renewals are set to come up this fall. and they may lose their status as well.
Dissenting from Thursday’s decision were the court’s three liberal justices.
Immigrant rights groups responded quickly, with anger and alarm aimed directly at the economic and human cost.
Todd Schulte. speaking for FWD.us in a statement. said revoking TPS protection is not only cruel but also “economic self-sabotage that will rip billions out of the U.S. economy and destabilize communities nationwide.” The group said that 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the U.S. workforce, including 15,000 agricultural workers, 13,000 nursing assistants, and 8,000 caregivers. FWD.us also said TPS holders generate an estimated $5.9 billion for the U.S. economy each year, and annually pay a total of $1.5 billion in federal and state taxes.
The ruling shifts the battlefield over TPS from the courts to the executive branch. And for families whose legal status has been rooted in Congress’s intent—to protect people who cannot safely return home—the practical effect is immediate: the Supreme Court has made it easier for the administration to pull those protections away.
Supreme Court Trump deportations Temporary Protected Status TPS Haiti TPS Syria TPS Samuel Alito immigration FWD.us immigration rights