WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for the Trump administration to remove legal protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the United States, meaning they could be subject to deportation.
The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, ruled in favor of the administration, which asked to continue with its plan to strip Temporary Protected Status from about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
The ruling could also boost the administration’s efforts to remove similar protections from people from other countries as part of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy.
“This is a tremendous win for the Trump Administration. Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what President Trump has always maintained: temporary protected status is, by definition, temporary,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Samuel Alito said that judges overstepped their authority in second-guessing the administration’s decisions. The court also rejected a claim that the decision to remove protections for Haitians was discriminatory.
The law in question “expressly restricts” courts from reviewing determinations made by the Department of Homeland Security on whether to terminate or extend TPS protections, he added.
As for the claims of discrimination against Haitians, Alito said the statements cited by plaintiffs were not “overtly racial” and were “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
In dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan accused the majority of soft-pedaling Trump’s comments about Haitians.
“The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” she wrote.
Kagan extensively quoted Trump himself, including his 2018 statement that Haiti is a “shithole country” and comments he made during the 2024 election baselessly claiming that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets.
Without protected status, affected people are subject to deportation via the normal legal process. But they can seek other avenues to remain in the U.S. by, for example, claiming asylum.
Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber, who were lead counsel in the case before the Supreme Court, said in a joint statement that “simply put, the Supreme Court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths.”
“This decision will endanger Haitian TPS holders who fled their homeland in pursuit of what generations of immigrants yearned for when they made the painful decision to leave all they have known: to live in safety,” they said.
Dahlia Doe, a Syrian TPS recipient and lead plaintiff in the case, said the ruling is a “devastating blow to me and thousands of TPS holders and our families who built our lives in this country in good faith.”
“We are real people whose futures now hang in the balance. This is not simply a legal outcome, for us it is the loss of stability, the fear of separation from our families, and the uncertainty of what comes next,” she said in a statement.
Last year, the Supreme Court in two separate decisions allowed the Trump administration to revoke the same kind of legal status from 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. The Trump administration argued in court papers that those actions set a precedent that lower courts should have applied to the Haitian and Syrian immigrants, too.
The TPS program, in place since 1990, provides humanitarian relief to people from countries reeling from war, natural disasters or other catastrophes. Recipients have legal status in the U.S. and can apply for work authorization for up to 18 months, subject to extensions.
But former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem concluded that Haiti and Syria no longer met any of the conditions for legal status, saying conditions in both countries have improved.
The State Department currently tells Americans not to travel to either country, with both included on its "do not travel" list.
"Haiti has been under a State of Emergency since March 2024. Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom," the State Department says regarding Haiti.
As for Syria, the department says that "no part of Syria is safe from violence."
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the advocacy group Global Refuge, said the ruling marked “a deeply painful day for hundreds of thousands of families who have built their lives here lawfully, paid taxes, cared for our communities, and who now face the prospect of losing everything.”
“Our immediate concern is what happens to these families and children should they be forced back to the dire circumstances that have long prevented their safe return,” she added.
In the Haiti case, a group of TPS holders alleged that Noem’s decision was not, as she claimed, based on a serious assessment that Haiti is now safe for people to return.
A Washington-based judge concluded in February that Noem had failed to follow the correct procedures in terminating TPS for Haiti and said there was evidence the decision was based on “anti-black and anti-Haitian animus.”
Even while the case has been pending at the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs have alleged that further evidence has come to light, saying in a court filing that the government “relied on a knowingly false statement” that Noem had consulted with the State Department, when in fact she had not.
In the other case, a federal judge in New York ruled in November in favor of seven Syrians who either already received legal status under the program or have applied for it.
In both cases, appeals courts declined to put the lower court decisions on hold.
In urging the court not to intervene, lawyers representing the Haitian challengers said people would "risk death" if sent back to Haiti.
Lawyers for the Syrian plaintiffs invoked the current war in neighboring Iran in arguing that conditions in the region are unsafe and questioned why the Trump administration had filed with the court on an emergency basis, seeking such an urgent decision, when some Syrians with TPS have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade.
The Trump administration has also withdrawn TPS from people from other countries, including Afghanistan and Cameroon. As of March 2025, about 1.3 million people from 17 countries had TPS, according to the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group.
Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, said the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday has “devastating consequences” beyond the Haiti and Syria cases.
The decision “stands to severely limit the avenues for relief in the other cases that are proceeding. These consequences will be felt by TPS holders, their families, their employers and this country,” she said at a news conference Thursday.
MacLean said attorneys representing TPS holders will analyze the court’s findings to decide on next steps.
Lawrence Hurley reported from Washington and Daniella Silva from New York.
