US Supreme Court clears way for mass deportations of Haitians and Syrians

The United States Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in Mullin v. Doe, overturning lower court orders that had blocked the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program created by Congress in 1990 to shield migrants from deportation when their home countries are too dangerous. The conservative majority found that courts have no basis to intervene in immigration authorities' decisions.

The ruling is the latest in a string of Supreme Court victories for Trump on immigration. On the same day, the court issued a separate ruling clearing the way for the revival of a policy restricting asylum seekers.

TPS currently covers roughly 1.3 million people from 17 countries. Haitians first received the status in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake, and Syrians in 2012 when their country descended into civil war. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, the Trump administration has moved to terminate TPS for 13 of those 17 countries. Thursday's decision gives those efforts a clear legal path forward.

The ruling also carries implications for the remaining four countries with active TPS designations: El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine, whose protections come up for renewal later this year. The State Department currently advises against all travel to both Haiti and Syria, citing widespread violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping.

The court divided along ideological lines. Writing for the six-justice conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that immigration authorities have exclusive, unreviewable authority to end TPS designations and dismissed arguments that Trump's derogatory remarks about Haitian migrants demonstrated racial bias. Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, wrote that "the evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print," adding that the ruling means hundreds of thousands of lives "will be uprooted, most permanently."

Lawyers for Haitian TPS holders said the ruling "will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths" and urged the Senate to pass a bipartisan House bill from April that would extend deportation protections for Haitians. The bill has stalled in the upper chamber.

"Families are here, kids are going to school, parents are going into work, folks are trying to commute, and it's like the Supreme Court just put all those activities on stop and put folks in limbo," said Viles Dorsainvil, who runs a Haitian support centre in Springfield, Ohio.

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, called it "a devastating betrayal of Haitian families who have lived, worked, and contributed to this country for years." Advocacy group FWD.us warned of economic consequences, noting that around 200,000 Haitian TPS holders are in the US workforce, contributing an estimated $5.9 billion to the economy.

DHS General Counsel James Percival welcomed the ruling, stating: "The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense." Court documents cited the killing of four Haitian women who were deported in February and later found beheaded, illustrating the mortal danger their clients face on return.

For Syrian TPS holders, many of whom arrived during or after a decade of civil war, uncertainty now defines what comes next. "Today, many of our community members, they feel lost," said Farrah AlKhorfan of Immigrants Act Now. "They are trying to understand what this decision means for them and how much time they will have to prepare for what comes next."