WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to strip temporary legal status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, a move that opens them up to deportation.
The 6-3 conservative court ruled that the Haitian and Syrian immigrants are not “entitled” to orders postponing an end to their temporary protections while litigation is pending, arguing those are non-constitutional claims. It means their work permits and deportation protections are stripped.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority, said that the Haitians’ claim — that their equal protection claim that their Temporary Protected Status was terminated on a racial bias — are unlikely to prevail in court.
“None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,” Alito wrote.
The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in a dissent that argued the president made clear racial comments about Haitians for the purpose of terminating protections.
“Haitians are Black. The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes,” they wrote. “It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community.”
The decision is likely to impact multiple lawsuits across the country in which federal judges have halted President Donald Trump’s efforts to strip legal protections granted to more than 1.3 million immigrants with TPS because they hail from countries the U.S. initially deemed too dangerous for return.
It also opens hundreds of thousands of immigrants with TPS up to deportation, part of the president’s broader efforts to curtail immigration and strip legal status from immigrants.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
