In a pair of sharply divided decisions on Thursday, the Supreme Court allowed President Trump\u2019s aggressive crackdown on immigration to move forward, permitting the administration to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants from the country and to turn away others at the southern border.<\/p>\n
Taken together, the opinions from the court\u2019s conservative majority signaled deference to the president\u2019s ability to set the nation\u2019s immigration policy, as the justices prepare in the coming days to issue more rulings that will decide how much power to give Mr. Trump across his boundary-pushing agenda.<\/p>\n
In one ruling on Thursday, the justices allowed the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections that have permitted people from Haiti and Syria to live and work legally in the United States for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has long pushed to terminate the program, known as Temporary Protected Status<\/a>, as part of his efforts to restrict immigration. The program was created by Congress with bipartisan support in 1990 to provide temporary legal status to people whose home countries were deemed unsafe because of war, natural disasters or other crises.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s 6-to-3 decision<\/a>, divided along ideological lines, clears a path for the potential deportation of 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, and it is likely to have implications for T.P.S. holders from about a dozen other countries.<\/p>\n The United States, which has a long history of political and military interventions<\/a> in Haiti, initially extended T.P.S. protections for Haitians in response to a 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 220,000 people. People from Syria were included in T.P.S. protections in the months after civil war broke out there in 2011. Both countries have faced violence and instability in the years since.<\/p>\n In immigrant communities throughout the United States on Thursday, the ruling brought fear and uncertainty, as people who were following the rules and living in the country legally contemplated a change in their status, potentially also affecting their ability to obtain work permits and driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n The ability of the government to quickly expel individuals who previously had protections will depend on whether they already have pending deportation orders. In many instances, T.P.S. holders have not received such orders, which will allow some of them to contest their removal before an immigration judge.<\/p>\n In a separate decision that also split 6 to 3, with the liberals dissenting, the court on Thursday also said the Trump administration could turn away migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border<\/a> by physically preventing them from crossing into the United States as they sought protection from persecution.<\/p>\n The administration had asked the court to permit the government to revive the policy, first used in 2016. Under that so-called turn-back policy, the government had stopped asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where federal law would have entitled them to try to claim asylum and receive protections.<\/p>\n Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read a lengthy summary of her dissent from the bench on Thursday, said the court had endorsed the administration\u2019s decision to \u201cslam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution,\u201d despite a system enacted by Congress to help people seek asylum in the United States.<\/p>\n The opinions were delivered in the final days of the Supreme Court\u2019s term that began in October. On Monday, the justices are expected to announce another batch of decisions, and the president has been bracing for a likely defeat when the court rules on the legality of his effort to end the guarantee of birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born babies of illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n Immigrant advocates denounced Thursday\u2019s rulings as major departures from the nation\u2019s long history of providing refuge to immigrants escaping persecution and unsafe conditions.<\/p>\n Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer representing the Syrian migrants, said the court\u2019s decision had allowed the government to \u201cignore a bedrock humanitarian protection that Congress, in bipartisan fashion, established three decades ago to ensure that vulnerable refugees would not be subject to partisan whims.\u201d Millions of people, he said, \u201care at risk of being sent back to countries in crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n The administration called the rulings a vindication of its efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty,\u201d James Percival, the general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on social media. \u201cThis is a win for the rule of law and common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n In the majority decision allowing the president to strip deportation protections, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the federal law at issue prohibited courts from second-guessing an administration\u2019s determination.<\/p>\n \u201cThis text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n The court also rejected claims that the administration\u2019s decision was motivated by anti-Black and anti-Haitian prejudice that would violate constitutional prohibitions against discriminatory government actions.<\/p>\n None of the statements the challengers cited by administration officials, including the president, \u201cwas overtly racial,\u201d Justice Alito wrote on behalf of the court\u2019s six Republican-appointed justices. \u201cIn substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.\u201d<\/p>\n The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Elena Kagan quoting extensively from Mr. Trump\u2019s derogatory comments about Haitian immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cThe statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president\u2019s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Since Mr. Trump returned to office last year, his administration has tried to end T.P.S.<\/a> for people from 13 out of 17 countries with the designation when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left office. The administration has separately reshaped the refugee system, cutting the number of people allowed through the program from prior administrations, and limiting it mostly to white South Africans<\/a>.<\/p>\n The changes have made it far more difficult for people who come from troubled or war-torn nations to find refuge in the United States.<\/p>\n In response to Thursday\u2019s rulings, Stephen Miller, the top White House aide, said that the United States was \u201cfully closed to asylum seekers\u201d and that Haitian refugees who received Temporary Protected Status should leave the country.<\/p>\n For humanitarian protections, the homeland security secretary determines when it should be available to migrants from any specific country, and the designation can last from six to 18 months. There is no limit to how many times a designation for a particular country can be extended.<\/p>\n The law allows the secretary to periodically review such protections, terminating or extending them for certain countries. But the law requires the secretary to consult with relevant federal agencies, including the State Department, about conditions in a country and then make a decision based on those assessments before initiating a change.<\/p>\n The program had been repeatedly extended, becoming all but permanent for recipients from Haiti, Syria and several other nations where crises have spanned many years. Last year, Kristi Noem, then the homeland security secretary, moved to withdraw<\/a> the protections from various countries.<\/p>\n Both sides in the case before the court<\/a> agreed that the law allows the administration to periodically remove countries from the T.P.S. program and that once terminated, beneficiaries lose legal protections and have to leave the United States.<\/p>\n But immigrant rights advocates said Homeland Security Department officials failed to consult with other agencies about conditions in those countries as required by the law.<\/p>\n In its opinion on Thursday, the court acknowledged that the process the department followed included \u201ca terse and unspecific email\u201d and that the department proceeded with the termination of protections for Syrians \u201cafter receiving a laconic answer.\u201d<\/p>\n But the majority said there was no role for courts to review the administration\u2019s determination, which it said encompassed both the final decision and the process leading up to that decision.<\/p>\n Justice Kagan disagreed, saying that nothing in the statute would prevent courts from deciding whether the government had followed the proper procedures to reach a final determination. In this case, she said, no meaningful consultation had taken place between the agencies. They had \u201cno two-way communication about the right subject,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s decision had left most of those affected with \u201cno legal option except to leave the country, even at the price of leaving family behind; otherwise, they will likely be detained or removed.\u201d<\/p>\n The case reached the Supreme Court after class-action lawsuits were filed by T.P.S. holders, including engineers, students, doctors and caregivers, who want to continue to work and live in the United States because, their lawyers say, they could be killed if they were forced to return to Syria or Haiti.<\/p>\n During oral arguments in April, the court\u2019s liberal justices pressed the administration\u2019s lawyer about whether the decision to end the program for Haitians was racially motivated. The justices cited the president\u2019s false accusations<\/a> during the 2024 campaign that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, ate their neighbors\u2019 pets and Mr. Trump\u2019s comments in December about Haitian immigrants being undesirable because they come from a \u201cfilthy, dirty, disgusting\u201d country.<\/p>\n D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said those statements were \u201cunilluminating\u201d and were references to poverty and crime rather than race.<\/p>\n