Washington– The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments on the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disasters, one of a series of immigration cases the high court is considering against the backdrop of the president’s broad anti-immigration crackdown.
The government is quickly appealing lower court orders that prevented DHS from doing so End temporary protected status for people from Haiti and Syria. If the justices agree with the Trump administration, the authorities likely will Protection stripped from up to 1.3 million people from 17 countriesThis exposes them to possible deportation.
The court has previously sided with the administration and allowed the program to end for people from Venezuela while lawsuits continue, though the justices did not detail their reasons.
The Justice Department says the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to terminate the program known as TPS, and the way the law is written prevents judges from questioning those decisions. “No judicial review means no judicial review,” the federal attorneys wrote in court documents.
But lawyers for some 350,000 migrants from Haiti and 6,000 migrants from Syria say judges can consider whether authorities have followed all the steps set out in the law. They assert that in both cases, the government shortened the process.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second administration, the Department of Homeland Security has ended protections for 13 countries. Some people who had lived and worked in the United States legally for more than a decade lost their jobs and housing within weeks, the attorneys said. Sigal Zota, co-founder and legal director of Just Futures Law, said returning to Haiti and Syria is out of the question for many people because those countries are still plagued by violence and instability.
“This is really life or death,” she said. Four Haitian women, deported from the United States in February, were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.
The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court after judges in New York and Washington, D.C., agreed to delay the expiration of the protections. One found that “hostility toward non-white immigrants” may have played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians. During his presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were kidnapping and eating dogs and cats. Federal authorities denied that racial animosity played any role in TPS decisions.
Protection was granted to Syrians for the first time in 2012, during civil war Which continued for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024.
Haitians joined the program in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and it has been extended several times amid its ongoing Gang violence This led to the displacement of more than one million people, according to court documents.
Maryse Balthazar was on vacation in the United States when the earthquake struck her native Haiti. She has now been living in the United States for 16 years with temporary legal status. She has two children and works as a nursing assistant for the elderly. The industry group said in court papers that the field depends on Haitian immigrants like itself, and they will face obstacles because of the Supreme Court decision that allowed their status to be terminated.
For Balthazar, losing that protection would be devastating. She lost her home in Haiti to an earthquake, and another house she could have lived in was destroyed in a fire, possibly due to gang involvement. “I would be homeless,” she said. “I’m scared…it’s a fear we all live with.”
Other immigration cases being considered by the Supreme Court this year include Trump’s push Restricting birthright citizenship The authority of the administration is restricted Asylum policy.