The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disaster, one in a series of immigration cases the high court is considering against the backdrop of the president’s far-reaching immigration crackdown.
The government is appealing lower court orders that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from quickly ending temporary protected status for people from Haiti and Syria. If the justices agree with the Trump administration, authorities could potentially strip protections from up to 1.3 million people from 17 countries, exposing them to possible deportation.
The court has sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela as lawsuits continue to play out, though the justices did not detail their reasoning.
The Justice Department argues that the Homeland Security secretary has the power to end the programme known as TPS, and the way the law is written bars judges from questioning those decisions. “’No judicial review’ means no judicial review,” federal attorneys wrote in court documents.
But lawyers for about 350,000 migrants from Haiti and 6,000 from Syria say judges can consider whether authorities followed all the steps laid out in the law. They contend that in both cases, the government short-circuited the process.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second administration, Homeland Security has ended the protections for 13 countries. Some people who have lived and worked in the US legally for more than a decade have lost jobs and housing in a matter of weeks, attorneys said. Going back to Haiti and Syria is out of the question for many people because those countries remain wracked with violence and instability, said Sejal Zota, co-founder and legal director of Just Futures Law.
