The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in April on President Donald Trump’s push to end temporary deportation protections for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, which could have wider implications for the three-decade-old humanitarian program.
The Trump administration is asking the justices to once again green-light its ability to remove those countries’ designations under the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows some immigrants from countries undergoing humanitarian crises to live and work in the U.S. legally. The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end TPS for Venezuelans in shadow docket decisions last year.
Solicitor General John Sauer wants the Supreme Court to provide guidance to lower courts, which have blocked the administration from terminating TPS for immigrants from Haiti, Syria, Ethiopia, and more.
The Supreme Court is consolidating the government’s petitions regarding TPS for Haitians and Syrians and will wait to act until after the hearing in April, leaving the protections in place for now on lower courts’ orders.
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Around 330,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians have TPS.
The groups representing the plaintiffs challenging the termination of TPS for Syrians — International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Muslim Advocates and Van Der Hout LLP — criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the Trump administration’s request for intervention.
“While we are relieved that our plaintiffs and thousands of other Syrians will maintain their TPS status for now, it is disappointing that the Supreme Court took the extraordinary measure of taking on our case before the lower courts have weighed in,” said Lupe Aguirre, deputy director of U.S. litigation at IRAP, in a statement. “We hope the Supreme Court will see the government’s attempt to strip away the lawful status of thousands of Syrian TPS holders who have been living and working in the U.S. for years for what it is — unlawful and wrong.”
Appeals courts have been split on how to handle the cases. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stopped the termination of TPS for Haitians from going into effect, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with DHS on ending the protections for Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Trump’s disparaging comments against Haitians played a role in U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes’ decision to keep the protections for immigrants. The president’s 2024 campaign, centered on mass deportations, pushed baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.
Trump has also sought a closer relationship with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, inviting him to the White House and removing him from a foreign terrorist sanction list. During his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to send Syrian refugees back, saying that they could be members of the Islamic State group.
The administration has repeatedly said TPS is meant to be temporary and that conditions in each country no longer meet the requirements to continue the protections.
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