{"id":506124,"date":"2026-03-05T23:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/506124\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T23:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:37:08","slug":"syrian-nationals-urge-supreme-court-to-keep-ruling-in-place-allowing-them-to-stay-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/506124\/","title":{"rendered":"Syrian nationals urge Supreme Court to keep ruling in place allowing them to stay in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of Syrian nationals urged<\/a> the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place a ruling by a federal judge in New York City that allows them to remain in the United States despite efforts by the Trump administration to end their eligibility for the program giving them a right to stay here. In a 40-page filing<\/a>, the Syrian nationals told the justices that the case was not the kind of \u201cemergency\u201d justifying the court\u2019s intervention. And in particular, they said, the government had not shown that it would be permanently harmed if they were allowed to retain their legal status while litigation continues. To the contrary, they wrote, they would be the ones who would \u201cface irreparable injuries through lost employment, the risk of imminent detention and possible deportation to a country in crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

For nearly 15 years, Syrians have been eligible to remain in the United States under a program known as the Temporary Protected Status program. That program, created in 1990, allows the Department of Homeland Security to authorize the nationals of a particular country to stay here and work when they cannot return home because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other \u201cextraordinary and temporary\u201d conditions there.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Janet Napolitano \u2013 then the Secretary of Homeland Security \u2013 designated Syria under the TPS program, citing the \u201cbrutal crackdown\u201d by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was in power from 2000 until his regime was overthrown in 2024. A relatively small number of people \u2013 estimated at several thousand \u2013 are currently protected by the program.<\/p>\n

In September 2025, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced<\/a> that the Trump administration would end Syria\u2019s TPS designation, effective Nov. 21, 2025. Syria\u2019s new government, she said, was seeking to \u201cmove the country to a stable institutional governance,\u201d and she had determined that it would be \u201ccontrary to the national interest\u201d to allow the TPS designation to remain in place.<\/p>\n

Seven Syrian nationals went to federal court in New York to challenge Noem\u2019s announcement. Shortly before the termination was slated to go into effect, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla issued an order<\/a> that indefinitely barred the Trump administration from ending the TPS program for Syria. In a lengthy oral decision issued on Nov. 18 and followed one day later with a brief written order, Failla explained that, based on the facts before her at the time, the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the decision to terminate the Syrian TPS designation violates the federal law governing administrative agencies. She pointed, among other things, to Noem\u2019s efforts to terminate \u201cTPS status for virtually every country that has come up for consideration.\u201d \u201cOn this record,\u201d Failla wrote, \u201cit confounds logic that as to a group of disparate countries, with disparate bases for designation, in different parts of the world, that in a few months all of them could resolve troubles that were so severe as to warrant TPS designation in the first instance, and have them immediately resolved, such that termination is appropriate for all of them, and that is because that is not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statute governing the termination of TPS designations, Failla continued, only allows DHS to look at the conditions in the country designated under the program. \u201cWith particular respect to Syria,\u201d Failla said, Noem\u2019s \u201cheavy-handed reliance on the national interest divorced from country conditions \u2026 renders her termination decision unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit declined<\/a> to pause Failla\u2019s order while the Trump administration appealed, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer came to the Supreme Court<\/a> on Feb. 26, asking<\/a> the justices to allow the termination go into effect while the litigation continues.<\/p>\n

Sauer cited earlier rulings on the court\u2019s interim docket in which the justices granted requests from the Trump administration to pause lower-court rulings involving the termination of TPS for Venezuelans. The Supreme Court, Sauer wrote, should \u201cagain stay a materially similar order with materially similar flaws.\u201d As an initial matter, Sauer argued, courts cannot weigh in at all on Noem\u2019s decision to terminate TPS status. But even if they can, he continued, Noem\u2019s decision meets all of the requirements outlined in federal immigration law.<\/p>\n

Sauer urged the justices to go ahead and take up the dispute on the merits now, without waiting for the 2nd Circuit to rule on the government\u2019s appeal. Such a maneuver is necessary, he said, because of \u201cthe lower courts\u2019 persistent disregard for this Court\u2019s stay orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their filing on Thursday afternoon, the Syrian nationals emphasized that the government had not shown that it was likely to suffer permanent harm if the Syrian TPS program stays in place while the government\u2019s appeal of Failla\u2019s ruling moves forward \u2013 a key criterion in determining whether to grant temporary relief. They stressed, among other things, that although the government pointed to a \u201clack of access to reliable Syrian records\u201d to vet TPS beneficiaries, \u201cTPS holders have been vetted by the government at least once, and many multiple times, in connection with their TPS applications\u201d; moreover, \u201cthe government has not alleged that Syrian TPS holders have ever been found to have committed any crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Syrian nationals also distinguished their case from those in which the Supreme Court had intervened at a preliminary stage, calling \u201cthe Venezuelan portion\u201d of those cases \u201cboth factually and legally distinct.\u201d Because several hundred thousand Venezuelan nationals benefitted from the TPS program, they reasoned, the government contended that it suffered \u201c\u2018acute\u2019 harm\u201d from the additional burden on \u201c\u2018police stations, city shelters, and aid services in local communities.\u2019\u201d But \u201c[t]he government references no such strain here,\u201d the Syrian nationals said. \u201cWhat remains is the government\u2019s alleged irreparable harm from being temporarily slowed in implementing its policies in precisely the manner it would prefer\u201d \u2013 which is not the kind of \u201cunusual\u201d reason to grant the relief that the government is seeking.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the Syrian nationals wrote, they will suffer \u201cimminent and concrete harms\u201d if the justices pause Failla\u2019s order and allow the government to move forward with terminating the Syrian TPS program while the appeals continue. They noted that the risks if the program is terminated are \u201cnot hypothetical.\u201d If one plaintiff is required to return to Syria, they said, she would go \u201c\u2018to her sister\u2019s home in Damascus, in a neighborhood that was hit by airstrikes\u2019 shortly before Secretary Noem announced\u201d her intent to terminate the Syrian TPS program. \u201cMore broadly,\u201d they continued, \u201cthe State Department\u2019s December 2025 \u2018Do Not Travel\u2019 advisory for Syria confirms the ongoing \u2018risk of terrorism, unrest, kidnapping, hostage taking, crime, and armed conflict.\u2019 \u2026 And in the last several days,\u201d they added, \u201cSyria has been caught in the crossfire as the military conflict in Iran has threatened to unleash a full-scale regional war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, the Syrian nationals told the justices that there is no need for them to grant review on the merits now, calling the government\u2019s request to do so \u201cbizarre and meritless.\u201d This case, they said, does not carry the kind of \u201cextraordinary national importance\u201d that would justify leapfrogging the 2nd Circuit, particularly when the record on which Noem relied in making her determination is not even part of the case. If the government truly believes that the question of \u201cthe administration of the TPS statute as a whole presents issues of pressing importance,\u201d the Syrian nationals suggested, it can bring one of the other TPS cases to the Supreme Court instead, which are \u201cat more advanced stages of litigation that contain published decisions based on full administrative records.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cases: Noem v. Doe<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRecommended Citation:
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmy Howe,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSyrian nationals urge Supreme Court to keep ruling in place allowing them to stay in the United States,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSCOTUSblog (Mar. 5, 2026, 5:39 PM),
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thttps:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/2026\/03\/syrian-nationals-urge-supreme-court-to-keep-ruling-in-place-allowing-them-to-stay-in-the-united-states\/\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of Syrian nationals urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place a ruling by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-506124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}