Supreme Court weighs Trump bid to end Syrian, Haitian deportation protections

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court seemed open to President Donald Trump’s attempt to end deportation protections for Syrians and Haitians, hearing oral arguments on April 29 in a case that also affects hundreds of thousands of other immigrants allowed to live and work legally in the United States.

Curtailing the humanitarian program is a significant part of Trump’s efforts to restrict immigration, which also includes his attempt to limit birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court is already considering that issue.

On April 29, the justices debated whether the administration followed the law when ending deportation protections for Syrians and Haitians – and whether courts are even allowed to review those decisions.

The Haitians' case involves the separate issue of whether ending the Temporary Status Program for those foreign citizens was racially motivated.

Trump has repeatedly maligned Haitian immigrants, including falsely accusing Haitians living in Ohio of eating people’s pets. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised “large deportations in Springfield.”

“The true reason for the termination is the president’s racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular,” said Geoffrey Pipoly, an attorney for the Haitians.

Two of the court's three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – pushed the Department of Justice on that point.

But Justice Elena Kagan, another liberal, said it appears that the Trump administration is trying to end the program for immigrants of all countries – not just Haiti.

And many of the court’s six conservative justices seemed sympathetic to the DOJ’s argument that the law bars courts from reviewing those determinations.

“If we apply the ordinary meaning of that term here,” Justice Samuel Alito said, “I really don’t understand how you can prevail.”

The court’s decision could affect the future of the entire humanitarian program, which provides legal residency and the ability to work to about 1.3 million people. Ending the program for everyone, immigrant rights advocates say, would be the largest stripping in U.S. history of legal status from people who now have it.

Created by Congress in 1990, the Temporary Protected Status program allows the Department of Homeland Security secretary to protect immigrants already in the United States from being deported to countries experiencing war, natural disasters and other emergencies.

The protections for those who pass background checks initially last for up to 18 months but are automatically extended unless the government determines that conditions in a country have sufficiently improved.

Since Trump returned to office in 2025, his administration has moved to end protections for immigrants from 13 of the 17 countries that earlier administrations declared unsafe. Renewal deadlines for the remaining four countries – including Ukraine – will be triggered in the coming months.

Haiti was first designated as too dangerous in 2010 because of a devastating earthquake.

Syrians in the United States became eligible for deportation protections in 2012 because of civil war and former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s “brutal crackdown” on dissent.

Last year, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determined that keeping the protections for Haitians and Syrians is not in the national interest.

Syrians and Haitians – including an aspiring neuroscientist, a software engineer and a registered nurse − challenged that decision. Judges have kept the deportation protections in place during the litigation.

The DOJ argues not just that the terminations were done legally, but also that the law creating the program bars judges from reviewing any part of the government’s decision-making process.

“It’s almost like these district courts are appointing themselves junior varsity secretaries of state, saying 'I second-guess that,'" Solicitor General John Sauer told the court.

Lawyers for the immigrants argued that the law doesn’t prevent courts from evaluating whether the government followed the required procedures.

“The government reads the statute like a blank check,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for the Syrians. “Today, they want to use it to expel noncitizens, but the power they seek is a double-edged sword.”

Under the DOJ’s position, he said, a different government could use the program for “mass immigration relief,” granting protections to any foreign citizen in the United States.

But while that argument was likely aimed at the court's right wing, the conservative justices seemed friendlier to the administration's positions.

Alito acknowledged that there wasn’t a lot of consultation between the DHS and the State Department about the conditions in Syria.

"It was very brief. And maybe it’s not what one would hope for," he said. "But once you say, 'Well, it’s permissible to review the adequacy of the consultation,' it's always going to be possible to raise objections."

And Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned if allowing courts to review whether the proper steps were followed would become “just kind of a box-checking exercise.”

“Why would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect when really what everybody cares about much more is the substance" of the decision to revoke TPS, she asked.

The dispute reached the high court on the preliminary issue of whether the administration’s decision to end protections should remain on hold while the challenge is being fully litigated.

How the court decides that question will affect not just the immediate futures of the Syrians and Haitians in the United States but also how easy it will be for the Trump administration to effectively do away with the entire program.

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June or early July.