Supreme Court To Hear Arguments For Ending Temporary Protected Status

Upon taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump and his administration have done everything in their power to make the United States a crueler, whiter place. Historically, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program has been championed by presidents under both parties, but that’s changed under Trump. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from administration officials who want to end the program permanently. 

According to the New York Times, TPS was created in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries experiencing famine, war, and other disasters. The program was passed by a Democratic controlled Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. The program has had bipartisan support since its inception, but a program providing a safe haven for non-white folks in America was simply a nonstarter for Trump’s white supremacist agenda. 

At Trump’s behest, former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem ended TPS for all 12 countries whose status came up for renewal. AP reports that the decision impacted 350,000 Haitians, 200,000 Salvadorans, and 6,000 Syrians. Lawyers for the Trump administration argue that the program was initially designed to serve a small number of people, not provide asylum for hundreds of thousands of people. 

“TPS was intended to protect immigrants who were in the U.S. when a disaster befell their own, not to encourage people fleeing those conditions,” Rep. Tom McClintock, Republican of California, said during a House subcommittee meeting about the impact of TPS. 

Lawyers who represent TPS holders have argued that DHS didn’t follow proper administrative procedures, review the conditions of the countries given TPS designation, and, in the case of Haiti, acted with racial bias. 

From the New York Times:

President Trump has been pushing to end T.P.S. for hundreds of thousands of people, and on Wednesday, his administration will ask the Supreme Court to bless that effort, which has faced a succession of legal challenges.

While the termination of T.P.S. for Haiti and Syria will be the question before the justices when they take the bench on Wednesday morning, the stakes are far greater. Already, the president has all but ended the resettlement of refugees, who for decades were admitted by the tens of thousands. The system for weighing asylum claims, long overwhelmed by the number of claims and the lack of resources, has been brought to a near standstill by the administration.

Now, if allowed to effectively end T.P.S., the administration would be taking another step in remaking the role of the United States in the global order, furthering a shift away from programs and ideals that leaders in both parties championed for more than half a century. 

The TPS program doesn’t provide a permanent pathway to citizenship, but it has allowed people seeking asylum from historically unstable countries to lay down roots. Take, for instance, Marcos, a 27-year-old aircraft technician from Venezuela who is here under TPS. Marcos told the Times that he earned $1,500 a week in a job with health insurance, dental care, and a retirement plan. As a result of Noem’s refusal to renew TPS, Marcos lost his job and is now making $600 a week doing freelance work. He has to read 300-400 page manuals to do his job, and is still in demand due to a shortage of trained technicians. 

“It was the worst news of my life,” Marcos said of finding out his TPS status wasn’t renewed. 

How, exactly, does making life worse for people like Marcos make the U.S. safer? These people aren’t criminals; they just want to live in peace. Isolationism in the big ‘26 is a crazy strategy. America’s reputation is already declining on the global stage (crazy how starting an unnecessary war that’s raised oil prices globally will do that), now you want to tell people fleeing from war-torn countries that they’re on their own? That seems like it only gives people two options: die or join your oppressor. 

“What we’re witnessing right now is the dismantling of humanitarian pathways coupled with the largest de-documentation campaign in modern American history,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and chief executive of Global Refuge, a nonprofit serving migrants and refugees, told the Times. To Vignarajah’s point, the Trump administration is also trying to end birthright citizenship and revoke naturalized citizenship from hundreds of people. 

I love that the Trump administration is spending so much time enacting its weirdo, racist ideas as opposed to doing literally anything to address the crippling job market and cost-of-living crisis. 

SEE ALSO:

The Supreme Court Fight That Could Decide The Fate Of 300,000 Haitians

Trump Administration Cancels Temporary Immigration Protections For Haitians