October 1, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end temporary legal protections for some migrants from Haiti and Syria, making them eligible for potential deportation.
The 6-3 decision overturned lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with ending temporary protected status for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The program currently protects about 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
The ruling was one of two immigration-related decisions Thursday in which the court sided with the administration. In another case, the court cleared the way for the possible revival of a policy limiting how many people may apply for asylum each day at U.S.-Mexico border crossings.
The court’s conservative majority found that federal law limits judicial review of the process immigration authorities use to revoke temporary protected status.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, rejected arguments that President Donald Trump’s past comments about Haitians showed that the decision to end protections was based on unlawful prejudice. He wrote that the statements were “insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, arguing that Trump’s comments were relevant to the case. Her dissent cited Trump’s past comments about Haitians in the United States.
Federal authorities denied that prejudice played any role in the decision and argued that temporary protected status was intended to be temporary, though protections for some countries have been extended for more than a decade.
James Percival, general counsel for DHS, praised the ruling, saying the program had become “de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense.”
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the decision “a victory 10 years in the making” in a Fox News interview on Thursday and said it allows Haitian migrants to be removed.
Attorneys for Haitian immigrants criticized the ruling and said conditions in Haiti remain dangerous. Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber said the decision could place deported migrants at risk.
They urged the Senate to approve an extension of deportation protections for Haitians that passed the House in April.
The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts delayed the end of the program for Haitians and Syrians. The high court previously allowed the administration to end the program for people from Venezuela.
Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, Homeland Security has moved to end protections for people from 13 countries, including some whose status had been extended for more than a decade.
Immigration lawyers argued that the terminations were made through an improper process and said that Haiti and Syria remain dangerous. In court documents, lawyers said four Haitian women deported from the United States in February were later found dead in Haiti.
The United States first granted temporary protected status to Haitians in 2010 after a major earthquake and later extended the protections amid ongoing instability and gang violence, according to court documents.
Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012 during the country’s civil war. The war lasted more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.
Congress created temporary protected status in 1990 to allow people already in the United States to remain temporarily when their home countries are affected by natural disasters, civil conflict, or other instability. The designation allows recipients to live and work legally in the United States for renewable periods of up to 18 months, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.
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