The US Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants of a humanitarian status that protects them from deportation, giving another boost to the president’s hardline approach toward immigration.The 6-3 ruling, powered by the court’s conservative justices, overturned decisions by federal judges that had halted the administration’s actions terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,100 from Syria.Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the ruling, wrote that courts cannot review the administration’s decisions concerning TPS, a decision that could doom legal challenges going forward on revocation of this status for any country. “The law governing TPS plainly bars such judicial review,” Alito wrote.
Kagan dissents: ‘Race played a role’
Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said evidence that race played a role in the administration’s Haiti decision was plain. Kagan highlighted several examples of Trump’s prior statements, including his false claims while running for reelection in 2024 that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Ohio, and that Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.”“The references — of filth, disease and primitiveness — are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes,” Kagan said. “It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community.”Alito said in his ruling that none of the cited statements was “overtly racial” and can “rest on race-neutral justifications.”
Miller says Haiti is safe for return
White House adviser Stephen Miller said the US is completely closed to asylum seekers and that Haitian refugees with TPS should leave the country, dismissing concerns about violence in Haiti by comparing crime rates there to US cities. “The fact that there might be pockets of Haiti where there’s higher crime rates, guess what? There’s pockets of Chicago with crime rates just as high,” Miller said.“America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers,” Miller said, adding that the administration has implemented agreements to send asylum seekers to other countries.The dispute carries potentially wide implications, affecting 1.3 million immigrants from all 17 countries currently designated for TPS. The Trump administration has said such protections were always meant to be temporary. Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche praised the ruling, saying the Justice Department “successfully defended the position that TPS was always meant to be temporary.”Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and co-founder of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, said the ruling places thousands of families in immediate fear. “Haiti is not safe, and everyone knows it. The court’s ruling does not change the reality on the ground or the contributions we make here in the United States,” Dorsainvil said.In a separate 6-3 ruling, the court sided with the administration in its defense of the government’s authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem US-Mexico border crossings too overburdened to handle additional claims. The policy, known as “metering,” allows US immigration officials to stop asylum seekers at the border and indefinitely decline to process their claims.