The Supreme Court is hearing two cases that could allow President Trump to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for thousands of people who have been living legally in the U.S., many for more than a decade.
TPS lets eligible individuals remain and work in the United States when they cannot safely return to their home countries because of natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary conditions. Congress created the program in 1990 to set criteria and procedures for protecting people fleeing such turmoil. Every president until Trump has used the program.
The current disputes involve TPS extensions for Haitians and Syrians. Haiti received TPS after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and left ongoing instability, cholera outbreaks and gang violence. Syria’s designation covers a much smaller group amid civil war and periodic attacks.
Trump has publicly criticized the origins of many TPS recipients, famously asking why the U.S. “only take[s] people from shithole countries” and suggesting preference for arrivals from nations like Norway or Sweden.
TPS differs from most immigration benefits: it applies to people who have continuously lived in the U.S. since the most recent designation and requires strict screening. “They have to go through a vetting process which involves biometrics, background check, running them against all the government’s databases,” says Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents the Syrians. “Two misdemeanors, you’re out.” TPS beneficiaries also must renew their status every 18 months.
The Trump administration argues the 1990 statute bars judicial review of TPS decisions, saying the law “covers the waterfront” and places those judgments beyond court scrutiny. Twenty-one Republican attorneys general back the administration’s stance. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach notes some countries have been on the TPS list for more than a decade and says, “Temporary protective status was never intended to be a de facto amnesty. That status, as its name suggests, is temporary.”
Haitian and Syrian lawyers counter that the statute’s judicial-review bar applies only to a specific section, not to all agency actions. They argue the administration failed to follow mandated procedures under the TPS statute and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which sets rules for how agencies make and enforce regulations and provides a framework for judicial review to prevent arbitrary actions.
In the Haitian case, then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated Haiti’s TPS following a Trump executive order, citing two reasons: that extraordinary conditions no longer prevent safe return, and that continuation of TPS would be contrary to the national interest. Noem made similar findings for Syria, citing vetting concerns and noting two Syrians under criminal investigation, neither of whom had TPS.
Recipients’ lawyers say those findings were pretextual. They contend DHS failed to conduct the law-required, extensive consultation with the State Department about country conditions; instead, the State Department issued a brief, two-sentence statement effectively endorsing DHS’s conclusions.
The Haitians also bring a claim outside immigration law: they allege the administration acted with racial animus. They point to inflammatory comments by Trump, including the false claim in a 2024 debate that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs… eating the cats.” The Supreme Court, however, has previously been reluctant to rely on political rhetoric in deciding such cases, often calling it “political.”
Lower courts issued preliminary rulings favoring the Haitian and Syrian plaintiffs, but the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has often deferred to the executive in immigration matters, emphasizing deference in cases implicating national security and public safety. The justices will decide how much judicial review is permitted and whether the administration complied with statutory and procedural requirements before terminating TPS for these groups.