The Supreme Court’s decision allowing President Donald Trump’s administration to abolish special legal status for Haitians and Syrians shocked communities across the United States.
Immigration advocates say the Trump administration’s 6-3 vote to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will have a huge impact on Haitian and Syrian nationals, raising concerns about deportation and family separation, and likely leaving U.S. employers in the lurch.
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But advocates warn that the ruling will have broader implications, creating new tools that “empower President Trump’s ICE deportation agency to strip hundreds of thousands of people of legal protection and work permits,” said Hector Sánchez Barba, president of the advocacy group Mi Familia Vota.
“This is a defining element of Mr. Trump and (White House Counsel Stephen) Miller’s brutality, including stripping them of legal or temporary status, revoking work permits, and forcing immigration judges to dismiss cases,” Barba said in a statement after Thursday’s ruling.
Here’s what you need to know:
What does this ruling mean for Haitians and Syrians regarding TPS?
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was created by Congress as part of the 1990 Immigration Act. This allows the executive branch, specifically the Secretary of Homeland Security, to declare that it is unsafe for foreign nationals to return to their home countries in light of extraordinary temporary circumstances, such as armed conflict, natural disasters, or other domestic crises.
When a country is designated as a TPS, its citizens are granted temporary legal status to live and work in the United States.
Haiti was first designated as a TPS after a devastating earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 250,000 people. This status has been repeatedly renewed as Caribbean countries experience a combination of political, security and humanitarian crises.
Syria has been designated with this status since 2012, after the start of its nearly 14-year civil war.
Overall, about 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians are believed to be in this situation.
Immigration advocates say the ruling will leave TPS recipients scrambling to find other legal avenues to stay in the U.S. or face deportation under President Trump’s mass deportation policy.
The decision also raises concerns about family separation, especially for parents of children born in the United States, given that both countries have been designated as TPS for more than a decade.
“Eliminating these protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians will tear apart families, disrupt workplaces and communities, and endanger vulnerable populations,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
“Many TPS holders have lived in our country for many years, raising American children, building businesses, contributing to our economy, and becoming essential members of our communities.”
What does that mean for U.S. employers?
Several labor groups and unions have emphasized the impact the sudden change in status will have on U.S. industry.
Neidi Dominguez, executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, called the ruling “a gut punch that demands that workers, immigrant communities, and the employers who depend on them unite and fight back through our organizations.”
“They work in all industries: hospitality, food service, education, construction, health care,” Dominguez said. “They are our colleagues and neighbors, and they are the backbone of this country’s economy, from services to construction to health care.”
The decision is expected to hit the healthcare industry particularly hard, with the Migration Policy Institute revealing that Haitian immigrants held more than 103,000 healthcare-related jobs in 2021.
“This unconscionable ruling will leave thousands more immigrants vulnerable to the Trump administration’s dangerous money-making deportation machine, including not only registered nurses and health care workers, but also teachers, airport workers, and hardworking people,” the National Federation of Nurses unions said in a statement.
“This decision will further increase the burden on health care workers and exacerbate the nursing staffing crisis.”
Why does this extend beyond the TPS in Haiti and Syria?
Lower courts had previously ruled that the Trump administration failed to follow proper procedures in ending TPS for Haiti and Syria, including conducting an interagency review to determine that conditions in both countries had improved.
But as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, explained, the Supreme Court’s majority decision doesn’t even address whether the Secretary of Homeland Security followed legally required steps in terminating TPS.
“Rather, the court stated that the question of whether the DHS Secretary followed the law cannot be heard in court in the first place,” he wrote. “This means that in future even clearly illegal decisions to grant or terminate TPS may be completely insulated from judicial review.”
He added that the ruling would allow the Trump administration to “return to federal court in other cases and overturn rulings against ending TPS against countries such as Venezuela, Somalia, and Ethiopia.”
Angelica Sedgwick Own, a U.S. immigration researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the ruling “gives the DHS secretary unfettered authority to make life-or-death decisions about whether it is safe enough to send people back to countries where violence is rampant, like Haiti, or countries facing conflict like Syria, without meaningful consultation about the human rights situation in those countries.”
What comes next?
Because the Supreme Court is the highest appellate court in the United States, there are few recourses available through the judicial branch.
But an array of advocacy groups is calling on Congress to intervene.
In an unusual bipartisan move on immigration, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in April to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitians until 2029. The Senate has not yet taken up the measure.
Some are calling on Congress to pass legislation that would establish a process for courts to review TPS terminations.
