The Supreme Court ruled June 25, in a 6-3 decision, that President Donald Trump can immediately end Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitians and Syrians, allowing the administration to move forward as the program is challenged in court.
For hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been living and working under Temporary Protected Status protections, the moment arrived with a thud: on June 25, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump can immediately end those protections for Haitians and Syrians.
The decision gives the administration a clear opening to curtail a humanitarian program that has allowed immigrants from dangerous countries to temporarily stay in the United States. The ruling also lands as part of a broader Trump immigration agenda. including the administration’s push to limit birthright citizenship. a separate case the court is still weighing.
The Supreme Court framed the stakes as a test of executive power—how much deference courts should give to presidents on immigration and foreign policy decisions. Even though the ruling is not technically the end of the legal fight. the 6-3 outcome effectively allows the administration to lift deportation protections while lawsuits proceed.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s three liberals, dissented from the majority’s conclusion that immigrants may “be put on the next plane.”
The core dispute centered on whether courts can review the government’s decision-making when it comes to who can safely live and work in the United States and who cannot.
Lawyers for about 350,000 migrants from Haiti and 6,000 from Syria sued to stop the terminations. They argued the administration reached predetermined conclusions about whether migrants could return safely to Syria and Haiti. The administration countered that the law creating the Temporary Status Protection program—commonly described as Temporary Protected Status—bars judicial review “of any determination” about whether migrants may live and work in the United States.
The majority agreed with that reading.
“The text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote, adding that the language means judges cannot step in.
Alito also addressed the separate question in the Haitians’ case: whether ending protections was racially motivated. He concluded that comments from Trump or the Homeland Security Department were not “overtly racial. ” and that. in substance. they reflected policy views that could be justified without relying on race.
Kagan. however. said the president’s comments were so sharply infused with race that Alito declined to repeat them in his opinion—leading her to include them in her dissent. She wrote that 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.”.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Haitian immigrants. During the 2024 campaign, he promised “large deportations in Springfield.” He also falsely accused Haitians living in Ohio of eating people’s pets.
Geoffrey Pipoly, an attorney for the Haitians, told the justices when the case was argued in April that the “true reason for the termination is the president’s racial animus towards non-White immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular.”
In the court’s majority view, that wasn’t enough to establish that the legal basis for ending protections was racially driven.
Beneath the courtroom debate is the structure of the program itself. Created by Congress in 1990. the humanitarian policy allows the Homeland Security secretary to protect immigrants already in the United States from deportation to countries experiencing war. natural disasters. and other emergencies.
For people who pass background checks, protections last for up to 18 months, and are automatically extended unless the government determines that conditions in the country have improved enough.
Since Trump returned to office in 2025, his administration has moved to end protections for immigrants from the vast majority of the 17 countries that earlier administrations declared unsafe. Renewal deadlines for other countries—including Ukraine—will be triggered in the coming months.
The Supreme Court has already allowed the administration to proceed with plans to lift protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans.
Immigrant advocates warn that ending the program for everyone would be the country’s largest-ever stripping of legal status from people who currently hold it. The administration argues the program is being misused and has lost its temporary nature.
Haiti and Syria, the two countries at the center of the June 25 ruling, face conditions the government has cited for years.
Haiti was first designated as too dangerous in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. Haiti remains under a national state of emergency. The State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti because of civil unrest. limited health care. crime. terrorism. and the risk of kidnapping. The guidance encourages anyone traveling to Haiti—or to other countries under the government’s highest risk warning—to leave DNA samples with a doctor and dental records with a family member in case they are needed to identify remains.
Syrians became eligible for deportation protections in 2012 because of civil war and the crackdown on dissent by former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The country remains under the State Department’s strongest warning against travel.
Last year, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determined that keeping protections for Haitians and Syrians was not in the national interest. Syrians and Haitians challenged that decision, and judges kept deportation protections in place during the litigation.
The Trump administration argued that that pause went too far.
At the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice made two arguments: that the terminations were lawful and that the statute bars judges from reviewing any part of the government’s decision-making process.
“It’s almost like these district courts are appointing themselves junior varsity secretaries of state, saying, ‘I second-guess that,’” Solicitor General John Sauer told the court during oral arguments in April.
Immigrants. represented by lawyers in the cases. said the law does not prevent courts from checking whether required procedures were followed. They argued Noem did not adequately consult with the State Department about the conditions in Syria and Haiti and instead manufactured reasons to reach the president’s ordered outcome.
A researcher at the Department of Homeland Security complained in a 2025 email—later turned over to the courts—that she was being forced to make conclusions about the program that she believed were not supported by evidence.
Ahilan Arulanantham. one of the lawyers representing the Syrians. said the record shows “really stark incongruities between what (DHS) is saying and what the State Department is saying about these countries. ” adding that they believe “the statute requires them to actually find whether the country is safe to accept a return or not.”.
With the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision. the legal fight continues—but the government now has a path to act immediately. For the people waiting in that uncertain space between litigation and deportation. the ruling changes what “temporary” means in practice: it becomes something the courts have allowed to start ending right away.
Supreme Court Donald Trump Temporary Protected Status TPS Haiti Syria immigration policy deportation protections Kristi Noem Elena Kagan Samuel Alito