The Trump administration has criticized the Temporary Protected Status program for allowing migrants to remain in the United States for years, even though, as the name suggests, their stays are meant to be temporary.
Many countries have had their T.P.S. designations extended repeatedly as previous presidential administrations determined that conditions remained unsafe for people to return home. But there have been instances in which T.P.S. programs have ended without much resistance, notably before President Trump assumed office.
The administration’s push to dismantle the humanitarian program is facing a major test on Wednesday as the Supreme Court weighs efforts to end T.P.S. for Haiti and Syria. The law gives the homeland security secretary the authority to terminate T.P.S. designations without court review.
Lawyers challenging the administration argue that officials violated proper procedures for assessing country conditions. They also contend that the terminations were politically motivated and meant to advance the president’s mass deportation campaign.
Legal challenges to T.P.S. terminations have become more common under the Trump administration, in part because of its rhetoric criticizing the program, said Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a research and advocacy group.
“Before 2017, when a T.P.S. designation was terminated, there wasn’t a lot of suspicion that it was being terminated for reasons that had nothing to do with country conditions,” Ms. Lind said. “Part of it was because the administration wasn’t coming in and saying, ‘We don’t believe that this should be extended indefinitely.’”
Between 1990 and 2017, the federal government terminated T.P.S. for foreign nationals from 12 countries and territories: Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Montserrat, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
The reasoning behind some of those terminations was relatively clear. “Some were so obvious that the emergency no longer existed,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
For instance, the Obama administration granted T.P.S. to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in November 2014 after the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Although the designations were extended, the administration announced plans in late 2016 to terminate those programs after the outbreak subsided.
In other cases, administrations have conceded that some countries still had unstable conditions at the time of termination.
The Clinton administration granted T.P.S. to Angola in 2000 amid its longstanding civil war. The Bush administration ended the designation in March 2003, saying it was no longer needed after Angola’s warring generals reached a peace deal following the death of the rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. But the administration also cited reports that found that the country lacked housing, medical services, water systems and other basic services that were destroyed by the war.
Still, the Bush administration justified the move by saying that many displaced people had already returned to the country, and Angola’s government was working with international groups to return millions of displaced people to their homes.
Madeleine Ngo covers immigration and economic policy for The Times.
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