The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority sided with the Trump administration over Haitians and Syrians on Thursday in a ruling on the administration’s attempt to end humanitarian safeguards under the Temporary Protected Status program.

Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said immigrants from those countries aren’t entitled to orders postponing the termination of their protections while their litigation proceeds, over dissent by Justice Elena Kagan, who said there was “no dispute” that they would suffer irreparable harm without such postponement.

“So the plaintiffs are entitled to stay in this country while these suits go forward,” Kagan argued in dissent from what she called “the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.”

Despite statements made by President Donald Trump and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about Haitians, Alito said there was a “race-neutral explanation” for terminating their protections, “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.”

Joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kagan said that both Haiti and Syria “are countries that
the State Department continues to list as too dangerous for
travel; they may be yet more perilous for a former inhabitant.” She said Thursday’s ruling means that “[h]undreds of thousands of lives will be uprooted, most permanently, while this litigation to annul the Secretary’s (likely illegal) termination orders proceeds.”

Lower courts had found the administration illegally sought to end protections for immigrants from Haiti, Syria and other countries. That led the administration to ask the justices for a ruling to give the government the power to immediately end those protections without judges intervening.

Solicitor General John Sauer sought emergency relief in the Haiti and Syria cases, complaining that lower courts had been wrongly second-guessing decisions to terminate protections. The justices declined to halt lower court orders in favor of Haitians and Syrians but agreed to hold a hearing to decide the issue in the case, which also carries implications for immigrants from other countries. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were nearly 1.3 million people with TPS status as of March 2025 from 17 countries, including 330,735 Haitians and 3,860 Syrians.

The termination decisions in question were made by Noem when she was head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Lawyers for Syrian and Haitian TPS holders argued there was no good reason for the justices to intervene on the government’s behalf.

Opposing what they put in scare quotes as the government’s bid for “emergency” relief, lawyers for Syrian nationals said the administration sought that relief “from an order that preserves the immigration status of 6,132 people who have lived here lawfully for years — in many cases more than a decade.” They called those TPS recipients “highly sought-after doctors and medical professionals, reporters, students, teachers, business owners, caretakers, and others who have been repeatedly vetted and by definition have virtually no criminal history. The government apparently needs urgent authority to send them to a country in the middle of an active war.”

Similarly, lawyers for Haitian nationals said deporting their clients would place them “in mortal danger.”

In the Syria litigation, a federal judge in New York ordered the postponement of the government’s termination of protections. The federal appeals court that covers New York declined to lift the postponement while the litigation continued.

In the Haiti litigation, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes also ruled against the administration. The Biden-appointed judge wrote that Noem “has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants” but that, as DHS secretary, she was “constrained by both our Constitution and the APA [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”

Reyes noted that the president “has made — freely, at times even boastfully — several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners.” Among other things, she recounted that he called Haiti a “s—hole country,” suggested Haitians “probably have AIDS” and complained that their immigration to the United States is “like a death wish for our country.”

A divided federal appeals court panel in Washington declined the administration’s request to lift the district court order. The two Democratic appointees in the majority said the government couldn’t show why it needed instant relief, whereas Haitians face “substantial and well-documented harms” if they lose protections, including “risk of detention and deportation, separation from family members, and loss of work authorization.” Trump appointee Justin Walker dissented, arguing that the government is irreparably harmed by courts intruding into executive policy. He also emphasized the “temporary” nature of TPS.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.

The post Supreme Court sides with Trump over Haitians and Syrians on immigration protections appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.