The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday appeared sympathetic to the Trump administration’s arguments that it can cancel temporary humanitarian protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants living legally in the United States, hearing a pair of cases that could let the government deport hundreds of thousands of people starting this year.
The cases test a key part of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, which has not only sought to deport undocumented immigrants but also to narrow the legal pathways for immigrants to reside in the United States. As he campaigned for his second presidential term, Trump vowed to revoke temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants while spreading baseless claims that Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, were killing and eating their neighbors’ pets.
Several of the court’s conservative justices appeared skeptical of arguments made by immigrants’ attorneys that courts have the authority to review whether Kristi L. Noem, who until recently was the homeland security secretary, took the proper steps to cancel the protections. The 1990 law that created TPS says there is no “judicial review” of the secretary’s “determination.”
“If we apply ordinary meaning of that term here, I really don’t understand how you can prevail,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told the lawyers.
Much of the harder questioning for the Trump administration came from the court’s liberal justices, who probed Solicitor General D. John Sauer on the TPS holders’ allegations that Noem did not take the required steps in canceling the protections. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked if, under the government’s theory, Noem could make a decision using a “Ouija board.”
The liberal justices also highlighted Trump’s past comments that some immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States, his favoring White South African refugees over immigrants of color, and his use of expletives to disparage countries including Haiti. Such comments suggest the administration acted from racial animus, the immigrants’ attorneys have argued.
“What about ‘poisoning the blood of Americans?’” Jackson asked, before listing other remarks.
Sauer said the statements referred to immigrants who were criminals or depend on welfare, neither of which applied to TPS holders.
The potential impact of the Supreme Court’s opinion, which is expected by June, extends well beyond Haitians to approximately 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries who had temporary protected status when Trump took office. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has sought to eliminate protections for 13 of those countries, including Haiti, Syria and several others the State Department still considers highly dangerous.
Congress created TPS in 1990 to protect immigrants in the United States from being deported to countries engulfed in an armed conflict, a natural disaster or another extraordinary crisis, allowing them to work legally in the U.S. for up to 18 months. Applicants to the program cannot have serious criminal records, and they must pay fees and pass a background check.
The U.S. government can renew the protections — and has, multiple times, drawing criticism from Trump for allowing the provisional status to last for years, even decades.
“Keep in mind, this is temporary protected status,” Sauer told the court. “The word temporary is used again and again in the statute, including its title. And we’re looking at a situation where there have been initial designations that go back to 1991 in the case of Somalia …”
Attorneys for the immigrants countered that they are entitled to a fair process.
“We’re talking about the power to mass expel people who have done nothing wrong to countries that remain unsafe,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney who argued on behalf of the immigrants. “And our view is it is unlikely that a refugee protection statute would have given that power to the secretary.”
In February 2025, Noem made good on Trump’s promise to limit the program, kicking off the process to cancel temporary protections for more than 353,000 Haitian migrants. They had first received protections in 2010 following Haiti’s devastating 7.0 earthquake, and the protections had been extended to include those who arrived later. Haiti has faced multiple crises, including the 2021 assassination of its president and widespread gang violence.
Although conditions in Haiti remained “concerning,” Noem argued last year that Haiti was largely safe for TPS holders to return to. Even if there were safety concerns, she argued, offering protections to Haitians was no longer in the “national interest” because the program was acting as a “pull factor” for illegal immigration.
In September, Noem terminated temporary protected status for a little more than 6,000 Syrian immigrants. They had received protections starting in 2012 amid the violent crackdown by Syria’s then-leader Bashar al-Assad. Because Assad’s regime fell in 2024 — and the country’s brutal civil war had subsided to “sporadic, isolated episodes of violence” — Noem determined that Syrians also could return to their home country.
Lawyers for the immigrants pointed to State Department advisories that warn U.S. citizens not to travel to either country because of risks of terrorism, kidnapping and armed conflict. The advisories recommend that visitors establish “proof of life” protocols in case they are taken hostage, “to confirm that you are being held captive and alive.”
In light of those dangers, lawyers for Haitians and Syrians sued to block the terminations, arguing that Noem did not follow requirements in the law that she assess a country’s condition before deciding whether it is safe. They said Noem scarcely consulted with other agencies in identifying risks and that the decisions to end TPS were motivated by racial animus.
The Trump administration denies that. Moreover, it points to the Immigration Act of 1990, a bipartisan law that established the temporary protected status program, which says terminating a country’s status is entirely the secretary’s decision and cannot be challenged in court.
“'[N]o judicial review’ means what it says,” the government wrote in its brief to the court.
The conservative justices were largely sympathetic to that argument. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said he was “struggling” with the immigrant attorneys’ arguments that a court acting to postpone Noem’s determinations was not an example of the judiciary stepping in.
Geoffrey M. Pipoly, a lawyer for the Haitian TPS holders, responded, “It’s difficult for me to answer that question without pointing out —”
“It’s difficult for me to answer the question, too,” Gorsuch cut in.
In both cases, lower courts sided with the immigrants. In the case of the Haitians, a federal judge in D.C. found that the termination was probably motivated by racial animus, pointing to Trump’s comments about the migrants in Springfield eating dogs and cats.
When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the cases, the justices left the lower-court orders in effect, meaning Syrian and Haitian immigrants still have valid work permits and are protected from deportation for now.
The prospect of Haitians losing temporary protections has drawn concern from members of the caregiving industry, who say that nursing homes across the country rely heavily on nurses and nurse’s aides from that country.
In April, House Democrats and Republicans voted to restore the temporary protections for Haitian migrants, voicing similar concerns. That legislative effort faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, however, and would need Trump’s signature to go into effect.
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