The high court\u2019s ruling could eventually have sweeping repercussions for all 1.3 million immigrants from the 17 countries that were designated for TPS at the start of this administration. That\u2019s because the federal government is arguing that decisions regarding the program are almost entirely immune from review by courts. <\/p>\n
\u201cTemporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench,\u201d a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not provide their name, wrote in response to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
Lower courts have repeatedly deemed the administration\u2019s actions improper. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing clear gamesmanship from government to insulate all TPS decision-making from any oversight,\u201d said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who is counsel in the case for Syrians and in other cases challenging five of the terminations. \u201cThey\u2019ve created a farce of a process to justify the ends that they sought, which was to strip humanitarian protections from over a million people.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the Trump administration\u2019s appeal,<\/a> Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening. <\/p>\n He pointed to a provision that says: \u201cThere is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.\u201d<\/p>\n Citing this hands-off provision, Trump\u2019s lawyers won brief emergency orders last year that allowed the administration to strip legal protections from about 600,000 Venezuelans.<\/a> In that case, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had quickly reversed an extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in. <\/p>\n The circumstances surrounding the Syria and Haiti cases are different. Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country\u2019s conditions. <\/p>\n They point to emails in July from a Homeland Security official to a State Department official. The Homeland Security official listed TPS designations coming up for review \u2014 Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. In response, the State Department official wrote: \u201cI confirm that State has no foreign policy concerns with ending these TPS designations.\u201d <\/p>\n State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. U.S. citizens are advised to prepare a will. <\/p>\n For Syria,<\/a> the advisory cites active armed conflict since 2011. For Haiti,<\/a> it says the country has been under a national state of emergency since March 2024. <\/p>\n But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had sufficiently improved. The notice for Syria<\/a>, for example, says \u201cthe Secretary has determined that, while some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.\u201d <\/p>\n If the government loses, Homeland Security officials would have to reevaluate the TPS decisions in consultation with the State Department and make a decision based entirely on the country conditions themselves. <\/p>\n The government could start over, in that case, and still find that TPS is no longer warranted \u2014 if the process bears that out.<\/p>\n In a friend-of-the-court brief led by immigration law scholars<\/a> at Georgetown and Temple universities, they explained that before TPS existed, similar forms of humanitarian relief were determined by the executive branch \u201cwithout reference to any statutory criteria or constraints, and with little if any explanation for why nationals of certain countries received protection while others did not.\u201d <\/p>\n With TPS in 1990, Congress sought to end that \u201cunfettered discretion,\u201d they wrote. Instead, the statute requires the Homeland Security secretary to terminate TPS if the review finds that conditions justifying the designation no longer exist. Otherwise, the law states, it \u201cis extended.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe point of the TPS statute was to depoliticize humanitarian decisions,\u201d said MacLean, the ACLU attorney. \u201cSecretary Noem in all of her TPS decisions has completely undermined that fundamental goal.\u201d <\/p>\n Ahilan Arulanantham, who is arguing for the Syria case on Wednesday, added that if the government wins, \u201cit also means they could probably grant TPS to countries that don\u2019t deserve it.\u201d Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, has represented the National TPS Alliance in separate litigation during this administration and Trump\u2019s first. <\/p>\n Top Homeland Security and State Department officials from the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations filed a brief<\/a> arguing that the Trump administration\u2019s terminations of TPS for Syria and Haiti were \u201cnot based on evidence and sharply departed from past inter-agency practices.\u201d <\/p>\n Haiti was originally designated for TPS in 2010 after a massive earthquake devastated the country and redesignated because of subsequent natural disasters and gang violence. In November, Noem announced that she would terminate TPS for Haiti, effective Feb. 3. She wrote in the Federal Register that \u201cthere are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti\u201d that prevent Haitians from safely returning. <\/p>\n But even if there were, she continued, \u201ctermination of Temporary Protected Status of Haiti is still required because it is contrary to the national interest of the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n The Homeland Security spokesperson said TPS for Haiti \u201cwas never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that\u2019s how previous administrations have used it for decades.\u201d <\/p>\n Syria, meanwhile, \u201chas been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades,\u201d the spokesperson wrote, \u201cand it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country.\u201d <\/p>\n In the Federal Register notice for Syria, Noem added that maintaining its TPS designation would \u201ccomplicate the administration\u2019s broader diplomatic engagement with Syria\u2019s transitional government\u201d by undermining peace-building efforts.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the Homeland Security secretary can use national interest as a reason to revoke TPS. Attorneys for the TPS holders believe any decision to revoke TPS must come down to the country conditions alone. <\/p>\n Syria and Haiti are among the countries<\/a> for which the Trump administration has also paused processing all immigration benefits. If their TPS protections expire, those immigrants would become vulnerable to detention and deportation even if they are eligible for other forms of relief. <\/p>\n U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.<\/p>\n (Aaron Schwartz \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Attorneys for the TPS holders say the terminations were also driven by racial animus. They point to various statements by Trump over the years, including his false claim that Haitians were eating the pets<\/a> of people in Springfield, Ohio, that they \u201cprobably have AIDS\u201d<\/a> and that Haiti is among the \u201cshithole countries\u201d<\/a> from which he would permanently pause migration. <\/p>\n Among those affected is a 35-year-old Haitian woman who has lived in the U.S. since 2000 and is raising her four U.S. citizen children in a Southern state. The woman requested to be identified by her middle and last initials, B.B., out of concern for her immigration case.<\/p>\n After graduating high school, B.B. got into nursing school but couldn\u2019t attend because she didn\u2019t qualify for financial aid. She said later getting TPS allowed her to become a certified nursing assistant, and she now works as a medical coordinator while owning a nail salon and three real estate properties.<\/p>\n Though B.B.\u2019s TPS remains active because of the court proceedings, her driver\u2019s license expired Feb. 3 and she has since had to rely on friends and rideshares to get around while repeatedly requesting a renewal.<\/p>\n She said she worries most about her children. If she were deported back to Haiti, she said, she would leave them in the U.S. for their own safety. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like planning your death,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m 35 and I already have a will \u2014 not because I\u2019m going to die but because of the situation.\u201d <\/p>\n On a call with reporters, attorneys and advocates, a Syrian man said he earned his master\u2019s degree in the U.S. and now works in the healthcare industry. The man, who was identified by a pseudonym, said he and his wife are afraid of what their future will look like. <\/p>\n \u201cTPS gave us something we had not had in years: a place to settle and a moment to grieve,\u201d he said, later adding that \u201ctelling Syrians to go back right now is not a policy \u2014 it\u2019s abandonment.\u201d <\/p>\n Among the public, there is broad support for TPS and other humanitarian programs. According to a poll conducted last month by the firm Equis Research,<\/a> 68% of Latino and 65% of non-Latino voters support fighting to give back legal protection to those who have lost their temporary protected status or asylum protections as a result of the current administration\u2019s actions. <\/p>\n![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777371789_94_.jpeg\")
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