The US Supreme Court on Wednesday began examining measures taken by President Donald Trump's administration to deprive hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants of humanitarian protection as part of his strict crackdown on immigration. Groups of TPS recipients from Syria and Haiti have filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the termination notices are merely a pretext for the administration's plan to revoke the current designations.

Published on: 04/29/2026 - 17:05

On Wednesday, US Supreme Court justices will hear arguments in appeals filed by the administration against rulings issued by federal judges in New York and Washington, D.C., that halted government measures to end “temporary protected status,” which the US government had previously granted to more than 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,100 Syrians.

This comes at a time when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is currently warning against traveling to Haiti or Syria, noting the spread of violence, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping.

The legal dispute is a test of Trump's executive authority and the Supreme Court's traditional adherence to the opinion of presidents on matters of immigration, national security, and foreign policy. Last year, the court allowed the government to strip hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans of temporary protected status.

Part of Trump's campaign against immigration

The revocation of temporary protected status and other humanitarian protections is part of Trump's broader crackdown on legal and illegal immigration since his return to the White House in January 2025.

In defending the procedures for temporary protected status, the government said that such protection was always intended to be temporary. The United States first provided this protection to Haitian citizens after a major earthquake in 2010, and to Syrians after their country descended into civil war in 2012.

It is noteworthy that, under American law, temporary protected status is a classification that allows immigrants from countries suffering from wars, natural disasters, or other disasters to live and work in the United States as long as it is unsafe for them to return to their countries of origin.

The Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority of six justices to three, approved requests from the Republican president to implement various tough immigration policies immediately while appeals are heard in the courts.

For example, it allowed Trump to deport immigrants to countries to which they had no ties, and for federal officials to target people for deportation based in part on their race or language.

Impact on more than a million immigrants

In addition, the plaintiffs say that this legal dispute could have wide-ranging repercussions, affecting 1.3 million immigrants from all 17 countries listed in temporary protection status.

The Trump administration has so far sought to revoke protections for citizens of 13 of those countries.

Lower courts also ruled against the administration's decisions to revoke temporary protected status, concluding that officials did not follow procedures required under immigration law to assess conditions in the country before revoking its designation.

For its part, the administration said that it followed appropriate procedures, and presented a broader argument that the courts cannot question the government’s decisions regarding temporary protected status, an argument that if accepted by the court may doom future appeals to failure.

Groups of TPS recipients from Syria and Haiti have filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the termination notices are merely a pretext for the administration's plan to revoke the current designations.

France 24/Reuters

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