The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from about 350,000 Haitian and 6,100 Syrian immigrants, ruling 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that federal courts cannot second-guess the Department of Homeland Security's decision to wind down the humanitarian designations.
The decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, overturns lower-court injunctions that had kept the protections in place and exposes a population that has lived and worked legally in the United States for as long as 16 years to deportation. The ruling also positions the administration to revoke TPS for nationals of other countries, a program that has provided humanitarian relief since 1990.
Alito opinion
Alito wrote that the statute governing TPS "clearly prevents courts from reviewing government decisions" and that the Haitian plaintiffs were unlikely to prove the terminations were racially discriminatory in violation of the Fifth Amendment's equal-protection guarantee. He noted the plaintiffs themselves had argued the administration may simply oppose TPS as policy, without respect to any particular group.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the Haitian designation in 2025 after concluding conditions in Haiti and Syria had improved, even though the State Department continues to list both countries on its "do not travel" roster. The United States first extended TPS to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake and to Syrians after the country's 2012 descent into civil war.
Liberal dissent
The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that President Trump's past statements about Haitian immigrants made the racial motive plain. "The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President's resolve to remove Haitians from this country," she wrote.
The administration celebrated the outcome. "The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty," James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, posted on X. "This is a win for the rule of law and common sense." White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the program "was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency."
Second ruling
In a separate 6-3 decision Thursday, the court ruled that migrants who present themselves to U.S. officials while still standing on Mexican soil cannot apply for asylum because they have not "arrived" in the United States. Alito called the case "straightforward," writing that "in ordinary speech, no one would say that a person 'arrives in' a place . . . before the person enters that place." The ruling revives a 2016 Obama-era "metering" policy that the Biden administration rescinded in 2021.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, said the consequences would be "predictable." She wrote: "More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not."
Counterpoint
Supporters of the ruling argue the court restored statutory limits that two administrations had stretched. Percival framed the decision as a correction to designations that had functioned as permanent residency in everything but name, and Jackson said the secretary's discretion over TPS had been improperly second-guessed by lower courts. A House Republican broke with the administration on the policy, telling Fox News that ending Haitian TPS risks a U.S. healthcare "crisis" because TPS holders staff home-health and elder-care jobs that employers cannot easily refill.
What's next
DHS has not published a removal timeline for the affected population, which immigration attorney Allen Orr, who represented Haitian nationals in the case, put at more than 1 million TPS holders nationwide when other designations are included. Jill Habig, chief executive of the Public Rights Project, which filed amicus briefs for 47 local governments, said the next phase will land in city halls and hospital systems. "Families will be separated, local economies will take a hit and people will be forced back to countries in the grip of violence, instability and humanitarian collapse," Habig said.