Supreme Court to take up Haiti and Syria protections
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in April on the Trump administration’s effort to end temporary legal protections for people fleeing war and natural disaster from countries around the world, including Haiti and Syria, the court announced. On Monday, the justices declined to immediately lift the protections for hundreds of thousands of people, allowing them to continue living and working in the United States legally while the case proceeds.
The dispute centers on Temporary Protected Status, a program created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife or other dangerous conditions. The TPS designation is granted in 18-month increments by the Homeland Security secretary, and it allows recipients to legally live and work in the U.S. but does not provide a path to citizenship.
Emergency appeals after lower courts halted the change
After lower courts stopped the immediate end of protections for 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,000 people from Syria, the Trump administration filed emergency appeals, asking the Supreme Court to lift those rulings. The administration also sought a broad court order that would block other courts from intervening when the Department of Homeland Security ends TPS protections.
The Justice Department argued that the Department of Homeland Security has sole power over the program, describing TPS as designed to be temporary. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court documents that “Lower courts are again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations,” according to the filing.
Lawyers say conditions remain dangerous
Immigration attorneys argued that both Haiti and Syria are still largely in crisis and that people cannot return safely. In court submissions, they wrote, “Without a functioning government, Haiti is a nation in turmoil. Rape, kidnapping, and murder are rampant, while food, housing, and medical care are scarce,” the Associated Press reported.
The attorneys also pointed to reports that four Haitian women were found dead months after they were deported from the U.S., according to the AP account. Lupe Aguirre, the deputy director of U.S. litigation at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said Syrians are relieved they will stay protected for now but disappointed the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case before it has fully worked its way through lower courts.
Previous Supreme Court stance in TPS cases
The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration on similar questions before, including by allowing the end of temporary legal status for a total of 600,000 people from Venezuela while lawsuits play out, according to the AP report. The court did not explain its legal reasoning in those emergency rulings, which it sometimes issues on an accelerated schedule.
In the Haiti and Syria case, courts in New York and Washington, D.C., agreed to delay the end of protections. One finding said “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” likely played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians, the AP said. Appeals courts left those delays in place.
During his presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats, the AP reported.
What TPS is and who is affected
A total of about 1.3 million people fleeing armed conflict, natural disasters and political instability in countries around the world have been granted Temporary Protected Status, federal authorities have said. The AP reported that federal authorities said conditions in the affected countries have improved and denied that racial animus played any role.
Protections for Haitians were first granted in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and have been extended multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents cited in the AP report. Protections for Syrians were first granted in 2012 during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024, according to the AP.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision weeks or months after the April arguments, the AP reported.