US Supreme Court
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The US Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with plans to deport about 6,000 Syrians and 350,000 Haitians who were granted temporary protected status under the first administrations of Presidents Obama, Biden and Trump. But at the same time the court expedited the arguments so that the cases will be argued in April, with a decision likely to be taken by the end of June.
Federal law allows the president to grant TPS to people in the US who are experiencing armed conflict, natural disasters and other unusual and temporary circumstances in their home country. President Trump is seeking to end that status for people from 13 countries, including Myanmar, Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Venezuela.
In two separate emergency appeals, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to block lower court orders that continued TPS for Syrians and Haitians while their cases are litigated. Instead of playing it out in the lower courts, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asserted that now is the time to act “given the continued disregard of lower courts” for this court’s actions in other TPS cases.
In an unsigned order, the court agreed with Sauer that the broader TPS question needed to be decided and that several questions needed to be set for expedited arguments in April.
The first is whether courts can review TPS designations and, if so, whether TPS holders have certain valid rights.
Ultimately, the court will decide whether the TPS holder’s equal protection claim has failed on the merits.
There were no significant differences.
The TPS program allows people from certain countries to temporarily live and work in the U.S. — because of an ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster or other unusual and temporary condition — resolved in their home country.
During the Obama administration, Syrians have been eligible for TPS since 2012 due to the brutal repression of former President Bashar al-Assad. Trump extended his status in 2018.
Haitians have been eligible for TPS since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010, even under Obama, that struck the country’s capital with an earthquake, followed by rampant political unrest, gang violence and disease. Biden extended the status into 2021.
Late last year, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristy Noem announced she was revoking protected status for Haiti and Syria because neither country met the program’s requirements.
Unlike two previous TPS cases in the past year, Monday’s decision is the first time the court has not immediately granted the Trump administration’s request to revoke a country’s TPS status.
In May 2025, the court allowed the Trump administration to end temporary deportation protections for Venezuelans while the government appealed. In an unsigned order, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only significant dissenter.
After moving through the appeals process, the case returned to the Supreme Court, and in October, the court reached the same result.
