The Supreme Court lets the Trump administration end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians

The Supreme Court lets the Trump administration end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians 1 of 2 | Linda Joseph holds a candle during a vigil at the Haiti-cultural-complex" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="152725" data-entity-type="location">Little Haiti Cultural Complex after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary Immigration status, or TPS, for Haitians, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in North Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File) 2 of 2 | The U.S. Supreme Court is seen, June 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File) 1 of 2 | Linda Joseph holds a candle during a vigil at the Haiti-cultural-complex" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="152725" data-entity-type="location">Little Haiti Cultural Complex after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary Immigration status, or TPS, for Haitians, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in North Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File) 1 of 2 Linda Joseph holds a candle during a vigil at the Haiti-cultural-complex" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="152725" data-entity-type="location">Little Haiti Cultural Complex after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary Immigration status, or TPS, for Haitians, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in North Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File) Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share 2 of 2 | The U.S. Supreme Court is seen, June 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File) 2 of 2 The U.S. Supreme Court is seen, June 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File) Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] Washington (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end Temporary Protected Status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries. It marked another victory at the high court for Republican President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on Immigration. Though the conservative-dominated court has put the brakes on some of Trump’s Immigration policies over the last year, it handed him a second win Thursday in a decision clearing the way for the potential revival of a policy restricting immigrants seeking asylum. The Republican administration argued that judges cannot second-guess Immigration officials’ decisions about protections that were intended to be temporary. The court’s conservative majority agreed, finding that the law creating the program keeps courts out of the process. “The Secretary’s TPS designation decisions are not subject to judicial review,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. 5 MIN READ 3 MIN READ 3 MIN READ Immigration lawyers said the countries at issue remain unsafe for migrants to return and they argued that the administration ended the protections in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats. The court majority, though, found that the statements from Trump and his administration were not “overtly racial.” Alito said that Haitian people should not face character attacks. “But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people,” he wrote. James Percival, DHS general counsel, applauded the ruling, saying the program had, in many cases, become “de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense.”The court’s three liberal justices dissented, writing that the law does allow for judges to step in if officials sidestep the process for ending the protections. Race, meanwhile, does appear to have played a role, Justice Elena Kagan wrote. “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. “Respectfully, I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.”Lawyers for the Haitian immigrants said the Haitians would be in danger if they are sent back. “Simply put, the Supreme Court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths,” Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber said.They urged the Senate to approve an extension of deportation protections for Haitians that’s languished since it passed the House on a rare bipartisan vote in April. “Families are here, kids are going to school, parents are going into work, folks are trying to commute, and it’s like the Supreme Court just put all those activities on stop and put folks in limbo,” said Viles Dorsainvil, who runs a support center for Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. “This is so sad for us to see it happening in a country such as the USA.”Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, also condemned the decision. “This ruling is a devastating betrayal of Haitian families who have lived, worked, and contributed to this country for years –- only to be cast out based on anti-Black Immigration sentiment,” he said.The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after judges postponed the end of the program for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The high court sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela.Federal authorities deny prejudice played a role. They also cited a Supreme Court decision from Trump’s first term that rejected bias claims based on his social media posts and upheld a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries. Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Homeland Security has ended the protections, including some that had been in place for more than a decade, for people from 13 countries.The terminations were made even though countries such as Haiti and Syria remain dangerous, Immigration lawyers said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.The United States first granted protections to Haitians in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents. Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024. “Today, many of our community members they feel lost,” Farrah AlKhorfan of Immigrants Act Now said about Syrian immigrants losing TPS protections. “They are trying to understand … what this decision means for them and how it will be implemented and how much time they will have to prepare for what comes next.”The program was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it does not provide a path to citizenship. ___ Associated Press writer Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report. Whitehurst covers the Supreme Court and legal affairs for The Associated Press. She’s won multiple journalism awards in a career that’s spanned two decades.