WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in two cases challenging the Trump administration's effort to end Temporary Protected Status for Syrian and Haitian nationals. The justices will consider the Department of Homeland Security's effort to terminate TPS for both countries in a pair of cases known as Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot.

Dahlia Doe, a Syrian national who came to the U.S. more than a decade ago for college, is among those whose status is at stake. Doe, who works as a research director and lives in the Bronx, New York, received TPS in 2021 and is caring for her father who has Parkinson's disease. She and six other Syrian nationals filed a lawsuit last year seeking to stop the administration from stripping away their deportation protections.

"I knew that TPS was being targeted. I knew that the Trump administration was going after TPS country after country. But giving us only 60 days was an even further shock and heartbreak for me," Doe said. "My life would turn into a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Everything I've built, my entire adulthood, would vanish right in front of my eyes."

"It's not just a legal change. It's not just a policy. It's disrupting entire lives overnight for people like me who have been here a decade or more," she said. "It shows how little our lives matter."

In September, DHS moved to end TPS for more than 6,000 Syrians, giving those authorized to live and work in the United States 60 days to leave the country or risk arrest and deportation. Syria is one of 13 countries for which the Trump administration has moved to roll back temporary protections, alongside Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen, Nicaragua and others.

Congress enacted the TPS program in 1990. The statute gives the homeland security secretary power to provide temporary, country-specific relief to foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home countries because of war, natural disaster or other extraordinary and temporary conditions. Relief is limited to up to 18 months, but the secretary can extend designations with no limit on renewals.

In 2010, the Obama administration designated Haiti for TPS after an earthquake affected roughly one-third of the country's population of 9 million, and in 2012 designated Syria, citing extraordinary conditions stemming from President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on anti-government protests. The Biden administration extended TPS for Haiti several times following the 2021 assassination of its president.

Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem moved to end TPS programs for more than 6,000 Syrians and 350,000 Haitians soon after President Trump took office, concluding after consulting with other agencies that the two countries no longer met the criteria. Syria's designation was scheduled to end in November and Haiti's in February.

TPS beneficiaries filed two separate lawsuits challenging the terminations, and judges postponed the effective dates. U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that the Syria termination was in part motivated by "undue political influence." Failla wrote that the administration had "endeavored to terminate TPS status whenever presented with an opportunity to do so, resulting in termination decisions that are ground not in law and not in fact, but that are in political considerations simply not relevant under the TPS statute." A separate judge found evidence that Noem's decision on Haiti was motivated in part by anti-Black and anti-Haitian animus.

The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court after appeals courts declined to pause those rulings. In March, the court agreed to consider the government's efforts but left the protections in place pending its decision. The justices last year allowed DHS to revoke protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Venezuela.

The Justice Department and those defending the administration have argued that TPS is supposed to provide temporary relief from deportation and that the decision to scrap the program for Syrians and Haitians was rooted in protecting national security and public safety. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a Supreme Court brief that Congress forbade federal courts from second-guessing TPS determinations regardless of outcome, process or reasoning. He argued that Congress imposed procedural checks by limiting designations to 18 months and requiring regular review.