In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court’s supermajority sided with Donald Trump’s revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian immigrants on Thursday. The sweeping ruling paves the way for 1.3 million people to be left vulnerable.
“This is a stunning decision of the Supreme Court today, and it’s just going to impact millions of people who are well-established in our communities,” immigration expert Andrea R. Flores, who worked in the Obama White House and Department of Homeland Security, said during a Substack Live interview that aired this morning shortly following the ruling.
Created by Congress in 1990, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program grants legal protections to immigrants from certain countries experiencing natural disasters, war and unrest. Hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants benefited from the program after the devastating 2010 earthquake, as have thousands of Syrian immigrants escaping the country’s civil war.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court’s supermajority, pulled the rug out from under them today, finding that the statute barred judicial review for “non-constitutional claims.” Haitian plaintiffs launched a constitutional challenge, pointing to Trump’s insults as clear evidence of racial animus.
Alito brushed it off with a “race-neutral explanation” — “namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past.”
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s liberal wing, responded that the evidence of discrimination is “plain to see.”
“The evidence [the challengers] have offered include statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print,” Kagan wrote, rattling off a series of quotations showing Trump spreading racist lies about Haitian immigrants “eating the pets” and denigrating their “s—thole country.”
During the conversation, Flores noted: “We all heard [Trump] use language against these populations that was racist and abhorrent, but now the Supreme Court gave him the authority to strip legal status from 300,000 Haitians, 6,000 Syrians, 400,000 Venezuelans.”
The decision, she noted, fell one day after another devastating earthquake in Venezuela.
In a separate decision, the Supreme Court handed Trump another immigration win along partisan lines, finding that the government could deny the right to seek asylum if federal agents physically blocked noncitizens from setting foot on U.S. soil.
Flores unpacks both decisions during a brief 15-minute roundup at the top of this newsletter.
