WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday on whether the Trump administration may revoke Temporary Protected Status for about 350,000 Haitian and 6,100 Syrian immigrants. Court challenges on behalf of the affected immigrants have been consolidated into a single case, Mullin v. Doe.

Temporary Protected Status allows people already in the United States to legally reside and work if they are unable to safely return to their home country because of a sudden emergency such as war or a natural disaster. Congress enacted the program in 1990. Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has terminated protections for immigrants from 13 countries. The court's ruling could affect the legal status of 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries designated for the program at the start of the administration.

The federal government is arguing that decisions regarding Temporary Protected Status are almost entirely immune from judicial review. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end designations and barred judges from intervening. "There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state," Sauer wrote.

Lower courts have repeatedly deemed the administration's terminations improper. Trump's lawyers won emergency orders last year allowing the administration to strip legal protections from about 600,000 Venezuelans.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reversed a Temporary Protected Status extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in. In November, Noem announced she would terminate the designation for Haiti effective February 3. "There are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitians from safely returning," she said. Haiti was originally designated in 2010 after an earthquake and was redesignated later due to subsequent natural disasters and gang violence.

In a written determination on Syria, the Homeland Security secretary stated: "The Secretary has determined that, while some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals." In July, a Homeland Security official emailed a State Department official listing designations coming up for review: Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. The State Department official replied: "I confirm that State has no foreign policy concerns with ending these TPS designations."

State Department travel advisories for Syria and Haiti warn people against traveling due to the risks of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence, and advise U.S. citizens to prepare a will. The Syria advisory cites active armed conflict since 2011; the Haiti advisory states that the country has been under a national state of emergency since March 2024.

"We're seeing clear gamesmanship from government to insulate all TPS decision-making from any oversight. They've created a farce of a process to justify the ends that they sought, which was to strip humanitarian protections from over a million people," said Emi MacLean, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.