Supreme Court Lets Trump End TPS for Haiti and Syria

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for citizens of Haiti and Syria, removing the legal shield that has let hundreds of thousands of them live and work in the United States. The vote was 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe, and it lifts the lower court orders that had kept those protections in place while litigation continued.

The decision does not deport anyone by itself. What it does is remove the courts from the path. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, held that the statute creating the TPS program bars judges from reviewing a Homeland Security secretary's decision to end a country's designation. The law, he wrote, allows "no judicial review of any determination ... with respect to the ... termination" of a designation, and its plain meaning "is clear" and "very broad."

What the program is

Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990. It lets the Department of Homeland Security designate a country whose citizens cannot safely return home because of armed conflict, a natural disaster, or other "extraordinary and temporary" conditions. People covered by a designation can stay and work legally for as long as it remains in place.

Then-Secretary Janet Napolitano designated Haiti in 2010, weeks after an earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, and Syria in 2012, citing the crackdown by Bashar al-Assad's government. Both designations ran 18 months at a time and were renewed repeatedly until 2025, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to end them. Noem said there were "no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian nationals ... from returning in safety," pointed to a new government in Syria, and said keeping the designations would be "contrary to the national interest."

Haitian and Syrian TPS holders sued in Washington, D.C., and New York. Federal judges in both cities blocked the terminations, and two appeals courts declined to intervene. The administration then asked the Supreme Court to step in. The justices agreed in March to hear the cases, left the protections in place in the meantime, and heard argument on April 29.

The ruling

The majority reversed the lower courts. Beyond the judicial-review holding, Alito addressed a separate claim from the Haitian plaintiffs that Noem ended their designation because Haiti's population is overwhelmingly Black, in violation of the Constitution's equal-protection guarantee. Courts can hear that claim, Alito wrote, but it "will likely fail," because the administration "has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal" and "simply opposes the TPS program."

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. At this stage, Kagan wrote, the TPS holders "ask for only one thing: that they may stay in this country while they continue to litigate their claims." They "are entitled to that relief," she wrote, and should not "be consigned to devastating, and indeed life-threatening, injury."

Who is affected

The two countries account for a large group of people, though published counts differ. NPR reported the figures as about 330,000 Haitians and roughly 3,800 Syrians. Other outlets estimated the Haitian total nearer 350,000. People who lose status revert to being in the country unlawfully, which means losing work authorization and becoming subject to removal.

FWD.us, a group that advocates for immigration changes and opposed the terminations, said 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the U.S. workforce, including agricultural workers, nursing assistants, and caregivers, and that Haitian TPS holders generate an estimated $5.9 billion a year in economic activity and pay about $1.5 billion in taxes. "Revoking TPS protection is not just cruel; it is economic self-sabotage that will rip billions out of the U.S. economy and destabilize communities nationwide," said Todd Schulte, the group's president.

What comes next

The administration has moved to strip TPS from most of the countries that held it at the start of the second term. Four still have it: El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine. Each comes up for renewal in the fall, and after Thursday's ruling a decision to end any of them would face the same bar on judicial review.