The Trump administration can now end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians who fled to the United States to escape natural disaster and persecution in their home countries, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 25.
The 6-3 decision along ideological lines immediately affects 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians but also casts a shadow over more than 1 million other TPS holders from 17 nations, many of whose status already has been threatened by the Trump administration.
The administration scored another victory when the court simultaneously released a separate 6-3 ruling enabling the government to turn asylum seekers away from ports of entry along the southern border. The ruling in Mullin v. Doe concluded that laws governing TPS do not permit courts to review or block administration decisions to strip deportation protections from immigrants who hold the status.
Samuel Alito
“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,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court’s majority.
Alito also rejected the suit’s claim that the TPS program for Haitians was racially motivated given remarks by President Donald Trump that people from Haiti eat dogs and cats and their presence is “like a death wish for our country.”
Alito brushed aside these and other statements as mere “heated language” with none that were “overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on” reasons having nothing to do with race.
Elaina Kagan
Writing for the minority, Justice Elena Kagan said courts do have a role determining whether TPS decisions were reached properly. In this case, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem failed to investigate the conditions in Haiti and Syria as required by statute.
Haitian and Syrian TPS beneficiaries “ask for only one thing: that they may stay in this country while they continue to litigate their claims. … They are entitled to that relief and should not instead be consigned to devastating, and indeed life-threatening, injury,” Kagan said.
She added that race was indeed a consideration in Trump targeting Haitians. “The evidence they (plaintiffs) have offered includes statements by the president so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.”
The ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado allows authorities to physically turn away asylum seekers before reaching the U.S., thus denying them the opportunity to apply for asylum.
The Obama-era policy required Customs and Border Patrol officers to stand along the border at ports of entry to prevent migrants from stepping onto American soil. Trump attempted to revive the program by presenting it as an effective tool in preventing migrant surges at ports of entry.
The ruling overturned an appellate court decision to block the policy and boiled down to how “arrival” is defined, Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
“In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place — for example, a house, a city or a country — before the person enters that place. The context in which the phrase ‘arrives in the United States’ is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary-meaning reading.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Writing for the minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor disputed Alito’s conclusion about the meaning of “arrival” in the current context. “If someone said, ‘Call me when you arrive in Washington, D.C.,’ it would be logical to call them once you have landed at DCA Airport, just across the river in Virginia.”
Immigrants will now face additional dangers in their attempt to find safety in the U.S., she added.
“The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will be forced to walk along the U. S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion.”
Immigration attorneys and activists condemned the rulings as inhumane, and some raised concerns about the economic fallout from the decisions.
“Yesterday’s ruling on TPS pulls the rug out from under families and businesses and is as inhumane as it is economically asinine, said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice. “Trump and the GOP will have to face the consequences for more disruption to our economy, higher prices and fewer services. And Americans will further suffer the consequences as their caretakers, friends and co-workers are removed from their communities.”
Congress must step up to protect the lives endangered in the asylum ruling, said Sarah Rich, senior attorney at Democracy Forward and co-counsel in the lawsuit. “On the 250th anniversary year of the United States, our federal executive branch is abandoning its obligations to asylum seekers fleeing perilous circumstances in fear for their lives and putting thousands of people — including children — in dangerous and dire situations.”