On June 25, the Supreme Court let the Trump administration strip temporary legal status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, opening them up to deportation. The vote was 6-3, conservatives against liberals. The ruling takes effect after 32 days — then work permits and deportation protections are gone.

These are people who came here legally. The government told them they could stay, work, and build lives because their home countries were too dangerous. Many have been here for years. One plaintiff, Viles Dorsainvil of Springfield, Ohio, called the ruling "the saddest day in my life."

What TPS actually is

Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990. A country gets designated when the Homeland Security secretary, after consulting the State Department, decides it's too dangerous for people to return — because of war, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions.

Is Haiti safe now? Is Syria? The State Department's own guidance advises against any travel to either country. That's the government's answer, in its own words — even as it deports people back to both.

What the Court did — and didn't — decide

Here's the part that should worry everyone, not just TPS holders. According to Ahilan Arulanantham, the lawyer who argued for the Syrian plaintiffs, the Court didn't rule that the administration's TPS terminations were lawful. It ruled that courts have essentially no power to review them:

"Instead they say the courts have no role to play in reviewing whether or not the decisions are lawful."

So a president can end protections for hundreds of thousands of people — and per this ruling, judges can't check whether he followed the law Congress wrote. Add it to the same-day ruling letting officials turn away asylum seekers at the southern border, and the Court handed this administration sweeping new immigration power in a single morning.

With last year's decision allowing the end of protections for more than half a million Venezuelans, nearly 1 million immigrants have now lost legal protections for the mass deportation campaign. Stephen Miller, the architect of the White House's immigration crackdown, confirmed the plan for those who lose status: "Of course... you're supposed to be deported."

The dissent names what this is

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said the Haitians' claim of racial bias was unlikely to succeed because none of the administration's statements "was overtly racial."

Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson answered with receipts. Their dissent lists the president's own words about Haitians — that they were "poisoning the blood" of the U.S., that they "probably have AIDS," that Haitian immigration is "like a death wish for our country." And during the 2024 campaign, Trump and JD Vance falsely accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio of eating people's pets — while vowing to end TPS for Haiti.

The dissent's conclusion:

"Haitians are Black. The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community."

Kagan wrote that the president's own statements show race "was a motivating factor" in the decision. You don't have to be a lawyer to follow that argument. You just have to read the quotes.

Congress could fix this. Senate Republicans won't.

This isn't a situation where nothing can be done. In April, the House passed a bipartisan bill to extend TPS for Haiti by three years. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who pushed the bill, said after the ruling that the Senate should take it up "immediately, and save lives."

But the bill sits in the Republican-controlled Senate, where it's considered unlikely to get the 60 votes it needs. Every Senate Republican who declines to move it is choosing to let 350,000 people — neighbors, coworkers, parents of U.S.-citizen kids — lose their right to live and work here, and face deportation to a country their own State Department says is too dangerous to visit.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put it simply: "Haiti and Syria remain unsafe today. Instead of showing basic humanity, Donald Trump and this Court have chosen fear, chaos, and cruelty."

Why this matters to all of us

TPS holders are here legally, with work permits the federal government issued them — in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities across the country. Stripping their status doesn't make anyone safer. It rips workers out of local economies and parents out of families, based on a decision three Supreme Court justices say was driven in part by race.

Watch what your senators do with the House-passed Haiti TPS bill. That's the test, and it's sitting on their desk right now.

Source

Read the full report at NC Newsline (States Newsroom): US Supreme Court rules Trump administration can end legal protections for 350,000 Haitians by Ariana Figueroa. Photo: Tom Brenner/Getty Images, via NC Newsline.