SCOTUS: Trump Admin Can End “Temporary Protected Status” For Aliens from Syria and Haiti

SCOTUS: Trump Admin Can End “Temporary Protected Status” For Aliens from Syria and Haiti

Temporary means temporary, right?

Wrong said the lower courts which prevented the Trump administration from ending a the 1990 Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for aliens from Syria and Haiti.

The U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 majority opinion by Justice Sam Alito ruled that the federal courts had no power to rule on the termination of TPS:

JUSTICE ALITO announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to all but Part III–A, and an opinion with respect to Part III–A, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE THOMAS, and JUSTICE KAVANAUGH join.

In these cases, we consider whether respondents, who challenge the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for aliens from Syria and Haiti, are entitled to orders postponing the terminations during litigation. We hold that they are not.

The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims. It allows “no judicial review of any determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination” of a TPS designation. 8 U. S. C. §1254a(b)(5)(A). The term “determination” can be used to describe either an individual decision or the whole process leading to a final decision, and under either understanding of the term, §1254a(b)(5)(A) squarely bars all of respondents’ non-constitutional claims.

The sole constitutional claim before us will likely fail. Citing statements made by President Trump and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, one set of respondents advances an equal protection claim that Haiti’s TPS designation was terminated because of the racial makeup of that country’s population. But, ironically, one of respondents’ other arguments undermines the equal protection claim by offering a strong, race-neutral explanation for Haiti’s termination: namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past. For these reasons, the District Courts erred in granting interim relief.

***

Although designed to afford “temporary” relief, TPS designations in practice have often lasted for decades. For example, the Secretary designated Somalia in 1991, and that designation remains in effect 35 years later. See 56 Fed. Reg. 46805 (1991); African Communities Together v. Noem, No. 26–cv–11201, 2026 WL 710666 (D Mass., Mar. 13, 2026). Three other countries retain designations that are more than 25 years old. See 64 Fed. Reg. 526 (1999) (Nicaragua); id., at 524 (Honduras); 66 Fed. Reg. 14214 (2001) (El Salvador).3 The current administration objects to lengthy TPS designations and adopted a new, restricted approach shortly after the beginning of President Trump’s second term in office. In Executive Order 14159, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the President directed Cabinet officers to “ensur[e] that designations of Temporary Protected Status are consistent with the provisions of ” the TPS statute and that such designations “are appropriately limited in scope and made for only so long as may be necessary to fulfill the textual requirements of that statute.” 90 Fed. Reg. 8446 (2025). Under this approach, the Secretary of Homeland Security has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, 13 in all. See infra, at 22–23.

Legal challenges to these decisions began almost immediately. In opposing those challenges, the Government’s front line of defense has been the judicial-review bar in §1254a(b)(5)(A), but the lower courts have consistently rebuffed that argument….

In sum, we hold that the TPS statute’s judicial-review bar applies to all non-constitutional claims.

Section III-A, which is not part of the majority opinion concerned the equal protection claim, which went to the merits not the procedural bar to review. The court found that there was no likelihood of success, so no injunction was warranted:

Viewing all the relevant evidence, we conclude that Miot respondents are unlikely to prove that race was a motivating factor in the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation. It follows that they are not entitled to interim relief on their equal protection claim.7

Kagan wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and KBJ was largely over policy:

For over a decade, the Government has provided humanitarian relief to Haitian and Syrian nationals in the United States through the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. The Secretary of Homeland Security first designated Haiti for the program in 2010 after an earthquake devastated the country; the Secretary designated Syria in 2012 because of the government and military’s brutal repression of the country’s civilian population. Since those initial designations, Secretaries have repeatedly examined the conditions in the two countries, and have repeatedly determined that they remain too dangerous to permit safe return. …

Today the Court undoes that preliminary relief—insisting that the terminations take effect now—based on two mistakes about the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success. First, the majority asserts that the Secretary’s compliance with the TPS statute is in every respect unreviewable by the courts. But in fact the statute allows judicial review of whether the Secretary adhered to the procedures it mandates—which is what the plaintiffs dispute here. Second, the majority claims to see no evidence that race played any role in the Haiti decision. But the evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat. Once that much is established, the case for interim relief is made: There is no dispute that the plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm absent postponement of the TPS decisions. So the plaintiffs are entitled to stay in this country while these suits go forward.

On policy, some Republicans agree with the dissent:

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued the following statement on the Supreme Court of the United States' decision in Mullin v. Doe, regarding Temporary Protected Status (TPS):

"Today, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling allowing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to be…

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) June 25, 2026

Needless to say, Democrats also disagreed with the majority:

In a cruel and inhumane decision, the Supreme Court just turned its back on more than 300,000 Haitians and thousands of Syrians who have worked and raised families here because they faced violence and instability back home.
 
TPS exists for exactly this reason: to protect people… https://t.co/CsCVydkzgz

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 25, 2026

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