The U.S. Supreme Court
Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images
Trump can begin deportations of Syrian, Haitian TPS holders, Supreme Court says
By Nina Totenberg, NPR
Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light to begin mass deportations of people who have been living and working legally in the United States for years, some even decades. By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority ruled that the President has virtually unrestrained power to end the Temporary Protected Status program, known as TPS.
Congress enacted the TPS law in 1990 to allow fully vetted and eligible migrants to live and work legally in the U.S. if they cannot return safely to their home countries because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, and other extraordinary conditions. The Department of Homeland Security designates which foreign countries qualify for TPS.
Since the law’s enactment, every President, Republican and Democrat, has embraced it, except Trump. He, in contrast, is trying to end the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. And on Thursday, the high court gave him the tools to do it.
Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito that under the TPS law, the president has unreviewable authority to end the program, without intervention from the courts.
There are more than a dozen countries that have been designated with TPS, including the two in this case— Haiti, with 330,000 displaced persons living legally in the U.S., and Syria with roughly 3,800. The U.S. State Department currently warns Americans in the strongest terms not to go to these countries to these countries or because of the dangers of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited health care. The court’s decision means that the President can end the protected status of Haitians and Syrians without the possibility of judicial review. Migrants living legally in the U.S. from those countries will likely revert to illegal status, meaning they will lose their jobs and face deportation, with many of them forced to leave their American-born children behind.
The Trump administration had attempted to strip TPS from 13 of the 17 countries that had it before the second term began. As for the remaining four countries that still have TPS—El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine, they may well lose their TPS when they come up for renewal this fall.
Dissenting from today’s decision were the court’s three liberal justices.
Reaction to the decision was fast and furious among immigrant rights groups. “Revoking TPS protection is not just cruel; it is economic self-sabotage that will rip billions out of the U.S. economy and destabilize communities nationwide,” said Todd SchulteFWD.us, a bipartisan group that advocates for immigration reform, said in a statement.
According to the group, 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the U.S. workforce, including 15,000 agricultural workers, 13,000 nursing assistants, and 8,000 caregivers. What’s more, the group says, TPS holders generate an estimated $5.9 billion for the U.S. economy each year and annually pay a total of $1.5 billion in federal and state taxes.
Copyright © 2026 NPR
Transcript:
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump shocked Washington yesterday when he blew up plans to sign the widely supported legislation to lower housing costs across America.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The president said he won’t support the measure until the Senate passes his sweeping elections bill that, so far, Senate leaders have said just does not have the votes to pass. That’s just the latest example of his frustration with those who won’t follow his lead. Not only is the president showing his frustration with the Senate, but also U.S. allies around the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I just want their loyalty. We don’t need their money. We don’t need anything. We have the most powerful military in the world by far. But I just want loyalty. You know, we’re so loyal to them.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR’s Franco Ordoñez has been following this. Franco, it feels like the president was celebrating Festivus at the Capitol with the airing of grievances. What can you tell us?
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Yeah. I mean, first, he really abruptly canceled a popular bipartisan achievement in Washington that both Republicans and Democrats wanted – really a rarity these days. It was, you know, a bill that focuses on one of the most important challenges Americans are facing right now, and that’s affordability. But Trump was just not having it, saying that his pet issue, this election bill, had to be first. I mean, it really was kind of like a “Serenity Now” moment for some of…
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ: …These senators. You know, Trump later went into a closed-door meeting with some of those senators and expressed frustration with those who rebuked him on the Iran war, actually prompting them to reverse course later in the day and vote against a similar war powers resolution that they had approved earlier in the day. And then finally, A, in a meeting with Mark Rutte, NATO general secretary, Trump went off on European leaders who he felt did not support him enough in the war against Iran. As we heard, he said he doesn’t want their money. All he wants is their loyalty.
MARTÍNEZ: So on that elections bill, John Thune, the Senate majority leader, has explained that the votes are just not there to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Does President Trump not understand how the Senate works here?
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ: You know, it’s not clear if he doesn’t understand or if he just doesn’t care about the norms and procedures of the Senate. I mean, Trump is more focused on having Republicans loyal to him than having a majority who can pass his legislation. You know, as you pointed out earlier, this speaks to much bigger issues about expanding his executive and political power and the loyalty he expects from those he works with.
You know, that of course includes the Senate, who he ripped into earlier in the day over Iran and, of course, withheld support from the housing bill that could have helped the party in the fall elections. But it also extends to foreign leaders, which we also saw yesterday. After Trump criticized European leaders, Rutte, the NATO chief, was clearly trying to maintain ties between Trump and the rest of Europe – I mean, just showering him with praise and only delicately pushing back when Trump criticized those allies.
MARTÍNEZ: There must be political implications, though, especially with the housing vote.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. I mean, it speaks to the divide in the Republican Party just five months from the midterms. Republicans have been clamoring for Trump to turn from Iran and focus on domestic issues, to focus on the economy. And then here you have them delivering to his desk something that addresses one of the things polls show Americans are most worried about – the cost of living. It would probably help him in the polls. It would help the party. And he doesn’t sign it. I mean, House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to meet with Trump today to go over some of the challenge Trump faces with Capitol Hill Republicans. But it just gives Democrats another example that they can point to and argue that Trump is focused more on election fights and not on kitchen-table concerns.
MARTÍNEZ: That is White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. Thanks a lot, Franco.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ: Thanks, A.