The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has granted the Trump administration the authority to strip legal protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the U.S. who fled from humanitarian crises.
In a 6-3 vote led by the conservative majority, the high court threw out decisions by federal judges in New York and Washington, D.C., that stopped the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals and 6,100 Syrian nationals.
Courts Can't Intervene In DHS's TPS Decisions, Majority Says
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, stated that “The [DHS] Secretary’s TPS designation decisions are not subject to judicial review,” arguing that the Immigration Act of 1990 “expressly restricts” courts from being part of the determination process on whether to extend or terminate TPS protections.
The majority also addressed the plaintiff’s claims of racial bias and violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment promise of equal protection under the law against the Trump administration.
Alito affirmed that none of the statements cited by plaintiffs, such as President Donald Trump's baseless accusations that Haitians were eating people’s pets, were “overtly racial” and “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
Dissenting Justices Disagree, Address Racial Animus
In the dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan asserted that the Immigration Act does authorize judges to intervene in the determination process if officials bypass the procedure for ending the protections.
“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,” Justice Kagan wrote. “Respectfully, I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.”
In May 2025, SCOTUS also allowed the Trump administration to rescind TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
According to the The World From RPX, Florida is home to the largest Haitian community in the country, with more than 300,000 people of Haitian descent residing in the Miami Metropolitan Area.
