The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration Thursday to revoke temporary deportation protections for roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians living in the U.S., clearing the way for their removal while legal challenges continue.
The 6-3 ruling by the conservative-dominated court could have implications for more than 1 million beneficiaries of so-called Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from more than a dozen countries.
Justice Samuel Alito, whose majority opinion was joined by the five other conservative justices, said the Department of Homeland Security's decision to end TPS for Haitians and Syrians was not subject to judicial review.
TPS protects its holders from deportation and is granted to people deemed to be in danger if they return home because of war, natural disaster, or other extraordinary circumstances.
Lawyers for Haitian and Syrian TPS holders contended during oral arguments in April that conditions back home remained unsafe and the administration's move was motivated at least in part by racial hostility.
Alito rejected claims that race was a "motivating factor" in President Donald Trump's decision to strip Haitians of TPS status.
"None of the cited statements by either the President or the (Homeland Security) Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications," Alito wrote.
Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to expel millions of migrants and has pushed to dismantle the TPS program as part of his broader immigration crackdown.
At the height of the 2024 presidential election campaign, the Republican president stoked fears about Haitian immigrants by falsely claiming they were eating Americans' pets.
TPS status has been revoked for nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Venezuela, Yemen, and others, in addition to Haitians and Syrians, since Trump took office.
Haitians became eligible for TPS in 2010 following a devastating earthquake and the country continues to suffer from extreme poverty, rampant violence from heavily armed gangs and chronic political instability.
The State Department advises Americans not to travel to the Caribbean nation "due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest and limited health care."
TPS was extended to war-torn Syria in 2012.
Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent joined by the other two liberal justices, said race clearly played a role in the decision to strip Haitians of TPS status and referred to statements by Trump that were "so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print."
"The references – of filth, disease, and primitiveness – are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes," Kagan said. "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."
During oral arguments, Solicitor General John Sauer claimed the president's comments about Haitians were being taken out of context and he was referring to "problems of crime, poverty and welfare dependency."
Sauer said court review of TPS decisions was barred to prevent "judicial micromanagement" of foreign policy determinations.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the Supreme Court ruling, calling it "horrific and lawless."
"Trump's hand-picked Supreme Court just cleared the way for him to deport hard-working, legal immigrants into imminent danger in Haiti, Syria, and other war-torn and gang-controlled countries," Warren said.
Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, said that while the president had the right to remove TPS status from the Haitians, he disagreed with doing so now.
"The situation on the ground in Haiti is a humanitarian and political disaster," Lawler said.
He also pointed out that about one-third of the 350,000 Haitian TPS holders work in the health care industry and "immediately shutting off TPS will create a crisis in our hospitals (and) nursing homes."
Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge, a non-profit that works with refugees, said it was a "deeply painful day for hundreds of thousands of families who have built their lives here lawfully, paid taxes, cared for our communities, and who now face the prospect of losing everything."
