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The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday considered a Trump administration effort to end Temporary Protected Status protections for migrants fleeing conditions in Haiti and Syria, drawing arguments focused on whether — and how — federal courts may review the government’s decision to terminate the program. The government urged the justices to limit judicial oversight of the process, while lawyers for migrants pressed that courts can examine whether federal officials followed the legal steps Congress laid out.
During the hearing, the court grappled with questions that could determine the reach of a wider crackdown on TPS. The administration asked the justices to reverse orders from lower courts that had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from immediately ending protections for Haitians and Syrians.
The case centers on the Trump administration’s broader attempt to end TPS for multiple national groups, the government said. If the Supreme Court agrees with the administration, authorities could strip protections from up to 1.3 million people from 17 countries, exposing them to possible deportation, according to arguments summarized at the hearing.
The court’s questions also reflected the administration’s reliance on past precedent and on the idea that termination decisions belong largely to the executive branch. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the determination at issue falls within a category of decisions “traditionally entrusted to the political branches,” adding that, “The kind of determination that is at issue here is just the sort of determination that lies kind of at the heartland of what has been traditionally entrusted to the political branches,” according to his remarks at oral argument.
Government lawyers said the homeland security secretary has the power to end TPS, and that the relevant law bars judges from challenging those decisions. The migrants’ lawyers, however, said courts can consider whether officials followed all steps required by the statute, particularly in the process leading to termination of protections.
Several conservative justices appeared to be leaning toward the administration’s position, suggesting that the outcome could depend heavily on how Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett vote. Roberts questioned whether the government’s position amounted to a “significant expansion” of a 2018 decision he wrote that rejected claims of bias based on then-President Donald Trump’s social media posts and upheld a travel ban involving Muslim-majority countries.
Barrett, speaking as lawyers argued the case’s procedural scope, raised questions about whether courts could intervene in the process. “Why would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect when really what everybody cares about much more is the substance?” Barrett asked a lawyer for Syrian migrants. The lawyer, Ahilan Arulanantham, replied that it is because “Congress, and us, too, and the millions of people who live with TPS holders, have some faith in government.”
The hearing also unfolded against a recent track record of TPS changes under Trump since he returned to the White House in January 2025, with federal authorities ending protections for people from 13 countries, according to migrants’ lawyers. Lawyers told the court that some people who had lived and worked in the United States for more than a decade have lost jobs and housing within weeks after protections ended, and they argued that returning to Haiti and Syria is not realistic for many.
Sejal Zota, co-founder and legal director of Just Futures Law, described the stakes in stark terms. “This really is life or death,” she said, pointing to court filings describing the case of four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February and later were found beheaded and dumped in a river.
The administration, meanwhile, denied that racial animus played a role in decisions to end protections. It pointed to the Supreme Court’s previous rulings against bias claims tied to the president’s social media posts and said courts should not revisit officials’ motivations in this context. One lower court found that “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” likely played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians, the hearing record described.
Just Futures Law’s argument and other testimony presented the human consequences in individual terms as well. Maryse Balthazar, who testified that she was on vacation in the United States when the 2010 Haiti earthquake hit, said she has been in the United States for 16 years with temporary legal status. Balthazar told the court that she has two children and works as a nursing assistant to the elderly, a profession she said depends on Haitian immigrants who would face hardship if TPS ended. “I’d be homeless,” Balthazar said. “I’m scared … it’s a fear we are all living with.”
Some supporters of maintaining TPS also argued that the consequences extend beyond individuals. The hearing included an industry-group argument that ending protections would harm workers in health-care roles, and it described Haiti’s continued instability and displacement as reasons TPS was needed. Court filings, as described at the hearing, said Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012, and that Haitians joined the program in 2010 after the catastrophic earthquake, with protections extended amid ongoing gang violence and displacement.
The justices appeared likely to issue a decision by summer, though the outcome may not serve as a final end to the dispute. The court’s ruling is expected to affect the ongoing litigation and could reverberate through other cases involving TPS, as well as related immigration matters the Supreme Court is considering this year.