Supreme Court Ends Deportation Shield For 356,000 Haitians And Syrians, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Judge Could Still Ask Why

WASHINGTON. The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 on Thursday that the Trump administration may revoke Temporary Protected Status from more than 350,000 Haitians and roughly 6,100 Syrians, resolving a long-standing concern within the administration that a federal judge could still ask why.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that courts lack the authority to review the administration's decisions to terminate protected status, a conclusion legal observers noted could doom essentially every future challenge to the removal of the designation from any country. The ruling overturned lower-court orders in New York and Washington that had paused the terminations, restoring the federal government's ability to act without the inconvenience of explaining itself.

In the same sitting, the Court cleared the way for the administration to revive a border practice known as metering, under which officials limit how many people they will allow to approach a port of entry to request asylum on any given day. The arrangement addresses a persistent problem in which migrants fleeing danger were able to reach American soil and ask for protection before being turned away.

"The President has determined that conditions in these countries have improved sufficiently for their nationals to return," said a senior administration official, referring to nations that remain under active civil conflict and the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake, "and the courts have now determined that no one is allowed to ask whether that is true." Trump himself has described Haiti in widely reported remarks as a "shithole country" and has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors' pets, statements that the Court's majority found did not establish that ending protections for Haitians specifically was motivated by anything other than routine administration.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan cited those same remarks at length and argued that the decision left hundreds of thousands of legally present residents, many of whom have lived and worked in the United States for more than a decade, with no court able to hear their case. The majority responded that this was the point.

At press time, the 356,000 affected residents had been reassured that the country they built their lives in remained a nation of laws, three of which had just been removed.