{"id":177949,"date":"2026-06-26T03:17:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T03:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/177949\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T03:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T03:17:20","slug":"opinion-the-supreme-courts-tps-decision-is-a-slap-in-the-face-to-lawful-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/177949\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | The Supreme Court\u2019s TPS Decision Is a Slap in the Face to Lawful Immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration<\/a> sweeping power to remove the legal right to live in America for Haitians and Syrians who are here under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. For more than three decades, T.P.S. enabled highly vetted immigrants from countries ravaged by war or natural disaster to remain in America.<\/p>\n

In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted Haitians the right to apply for T.P.S. after a devastating earthquake. Two years later, Syrians received the same designation in recognition of the brutal repression of the Syrian government. The United States government has repeatedly extended these T.P.S. designations because these countries remain too dangerous to permit safe return. During this time, T.P.S. has allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians to live and work lawfully in the United States.<\/p>\n

But no longer. In a 6-to-3 opinion, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration virtually free rein to end the program.<\/p>\n

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided at several points in her tenure to arbitrarily scuttle T.P.S. designation for 13 countries, including Haiti and Syria. This was among the most insidious examples of the second Trump administration\u2019s cruel treatment of immigrants. It seemed, as well, an effort to turn legal immigrants into undocumented migrants. After Thursday\u2019s decision, some one million T.P.S. holders \u2014 out of nearly 1.3 million people who hold T.P.S. protections \u2014 are at risk of immediate arrest, detention and deportation.<\/p>\n

In a country where we regularly lament a broken immigration system, T.P.S. has been a rare, long-running success story. In the years before T.P.S.<\/a>, the executive branch granted nationality-based safe haven on an ad hoc basis. That protection was streamlined and rationalized<\/a> after Congress passed the law creating T.P.S. in 1990. Since then, T.P.S. applicants have been subject to an initial exhaustive vetting process, continual review thereafter and mandatory termination or disqualification if they later commit one felony<\/a> or at least two misdemeanors.<\/p>\n

People who passed the rigorous vetting process were eligible for protection from deportation, protection from detention based on immigration status and authorization to work.<\/p>\n

And work they have. T.P.S. holders are medical professionals, reporters, business owners, caretakers and construction workers. According to the bipartisan immigration policy organization FWD.us, T.P.S. holders contribute<\/a> about $29 billion annually to the U.S. economy, in addition to paying $7.8 billion in taxes.<\/p>\n

To grant or remove T.P.S. designation for people from a particular country, the statute required an administration to consult with the State Department, receive a review of country conditions and provide an explanation regarding its decision. In siding with the Trump administration, the court has essentially thrown out that careful system of checks and balances.<\/p>\n

Ms. Noem did not consult with the State Department before ending T.P.S. for Haiti, according to the case\u2019s plaintiffs. According to a homeland security project manager<\/a>, she also terminated Haiti\u2019s T.P.S. designation without getting a recommendation about country conditions from the State Department.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s position that the executive branch\u2019s T.P.S. terminations cannot be challenged in court was vindicated by Thursday\u2019s opinion. The majority\u2019s reasoning proceeded in two steps. First, the court explained that any decision made by the D.H.S. secretary is unreviewable by courts unless the challengers bring a claim under the U.S. Constitution, such as that a termination decision was motivated by racial animus. Second, the court found no evidence that race motivated the termination decisions for Haiti or Syria.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued in April that courts have an obligation to ensure that the T.P.S. termination decision is not based on whims or racist ideology. In considering the challenge to the termination of T.P.S. for Syria, on Nov. 18, 2025, a Federal District Court judge, Katherine Polk Failla, noted<\/a> that all the Trump administration terminations \u201chave involved non-European, majority nonwhite populations.\u201d Judge Ana C. Reyes, of the Federal District Court considering the challenge to the termination of T.P.S. for Haiti, commented<\/a> that it is \u201csubstantially likely\u201d that the terminations are driven by \u201chostility to nonwhite immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in her dissent that Donald Trump had repeatedly used \u201crepellent and racially inflected\u201d statements regarding immigrants \u2014 notoriously insisting that Haitians are eating dogs and baselessly commenting<\/a> that Haitians in America could have AIDS and are \u201cpoisoning the blood\u201d of this country. Justice Samuel Alito dismissed those concerns in the majority decision. He argued that the many derogatory statements of the administration \u201ccould rest on race-neutral justifications.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dissent further warned of the devastation that will result as T.P.S. holders are \u201cput on the next plane\u201d back to Haiti or Syria.<\/p>\n

T.P.S. holders nationwide have been bracing for the worst, and now it\u2019s here: family separations, loss of employment and deportations. In Syria and Haiti, there are risks of terrorism, kidnapping and armed conflict.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court plaintiff Marlene Gail Noble<\/a> was born in Haiti. Struck with spinal tuberculosis as an infant, she was abandoned by her birth parents some 30 years ago. A Florida faith-based organization brought her to the United States for medical attention as a toddler, and she was later adopted by an American couple. She now works as a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department. She learned only as an adult that her adoptive parents had failed to submit the paperwork necessary for her to become a U.S. citizen. T.P.S. allowed her to stay and work.<\/p>\n

Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot<\/a>, also from Haiti, is pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience and is researching how aging and Alzheimer\u2019s disease damage blood vessels in the brain. Losing T.P.S. could devastate his research and graduate studies.<\/p>\n

On April 16, the House passed legislation<\/a> to extend Haiti\u2019s T.P.S. designation with a bipartisan vote. But getting the legislation through the Senate<\/a> and signed into law by the president would require cooperation we don\u2019t see on the Hill these days.<\/p>\n

As far-off as it may seem, congressional action is now the only way forward. Any new T.P.S. statute should explicitly provide for judicial review of termination decisions, effectively overruling Thursday\u2019s devastating Supreme Court decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration sweeping power to remove the legal right to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[4304,4064,10882,10939,29878,29173,54201,11049,54200,31883,95,31884,392,4062,25779],"class_list":["post-177949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-deportation","tag-donald-j","tag-haiti","tag-haitian-americans","tag-homeland-security-department","tag-immigration-and-emigration","tag-kristi","tag-minorities","tag-noem","tag-supreme-court-us","tag-syria","tag-temporary-protected-status-us-immigration","tag-trump","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116814246170105526","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}