President Trump could move forward with mass deportations of people who have been living legally in the U.S., many for more than a decade, if he wins two cases before the Supreme Court Wednesday.
The cases center on the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows eligible people to live and work in the U.S. when they cannot safely return to their home countries because of natural disasters, armed conflict, or other extraordinary conditions. Congress created TPS in 1990 to set criteria and procedures for protecting and registering people fleeing such turmoil. Every president until Trump had used the program.
Trump is trying to end TPS designations for two countries: Haiti, where a catastrophic 2010 earthquake killed more than 300,000 people and left ongoing problems including gangs, cholera outbreaks and weak governance; and Syria, where roughly 7,000 people were granted TPS as civil war and continuing bombing have made parts of the country unsafe.
TPS operates differently than other immigration benefits. It covers only people who have continuously lived in the U.S. since the most recent designation for their country. Eligible individuals undergo vetting that includes biometrics and background checks; as attorney Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents the Syrians, notes, even two misdemeanor convictions can disqualify someone. TPS beneficiaries must renew status roughly every 18 months and repeat the process.
The Trump administration argues that the 1990 TPS statute bars judicial review of the agency decisions involved. In its briefs it says the statute “covers the waterfront,” precluding courts from reviewing the law’s provisions. Twenty-one Republican state attorneys general support the administration; Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach says TPS was never meant to be “a de facto amnesty” and stresses the program’s temporary nature.
Recipients’ lawyers counter that the judicial-review bar applies only to one section of the statute, not to all agency action, and they say the administration failed to follow required procedures under the TPS statute and the Administrative Procedure Act. The APA lays out how federal agencies must make and enforce rules and provides a basis for courts to review agency actions to prevent arbitrary decisions.
In the Haitian case, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem terminated Haiti’s TPS in response to a Trump executive order, citing two reasons: that conditions in Haiti are no longer extraordinary, and that maintaining TPS for Haitians is “contrary to the national interest.” Noem made parallel findings for Syria, citing vetting concerns and referring to two Syrians under criminal investigation who did not have TPS.
The administration emphasizes that courts traditionally give deference to executive-branch immigration judgments on national security and public-safety grounds. TPS recipients argue the agencies’ findings were pretextual—shams—and that required consultation with the State Department about country conditions was cursory. They say the State Department’s response essentially rubber-stamped the DHS decisions with only a brief statement.
The Haitian plaintiffs also press a claim outside immigration law: they say the administration’s actions were discriminatory on the basis of race, pointing to inflammatory remarks by President Trump, including a false 2024 debate claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs and cats. The Supreme Court has previously declined to consider similar political rhetoric in other cases, calling it political in nature.
Lower courts had issued preliminary rulings favoring both the Haitian and Syrian TPS recipients. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has often deferred to the administration in immigration disputes and has criticized lower courts for overstepping in the past. The outcome of Wednesday’s arguments could determine whether thousands who have lived and worked legally in the U.S. for years will be permitted to stay.