WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals, clearing the way for the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with terminating the humanitarian program for those groups.
The court ruled 6-3 that federal courts generally cannot review the government’s decisions to designate or end TPS protections under the relevant immigration law, reversing lower court orders that had blocked the administration’s actions. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, according to court summaries of the decision.
The decision affects more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians who had been allowed to live and work legally in the United States under TPS, a program created by Congress in 1990 for people from countries facing conditions such as armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary circumstances.
The ruling came after the Trump administration sought to terminate TPS designations for Haiti and Syria, arguing that the conditions supporting the protections no longer justified continuing them. The administration has said TPS was designed as a temporary measure and that decisions about ending designations belong to the executive branch.
Immigration advocates and attorneys who challenged the terminations argued that ending protections would place people who have lived and worked in the United States under legal status at risk of losing authorization to remain. They also raised claims related to the process and reasoning behind the terminations. The Supreme Court did not allow those challenges to prevent the administration from proceeding.
The ruling could have broader implications for other TPS holders. The program covered about 1.3 million people from 17 countries at the time of the administration’s review, and legal analysts said the decision could make future TPS terminations more difficult to challenge in court.
The Biden administration had previously extended or continued protections for several countries because of ongoing humanitarian concerns, while the Trump administration moved to reverse some of those decisions. The Supreme Court’s ruling addressed the authority of the administration to end TPS designations, rather than deciding whether individual countries remain unsafe for return.
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to implement the termination process under the administration’s directives. The immediate status of affected TPS holders will depend on official termination timelines and any further legal or administrative actions.
