WASHINGTON — Tackling one prong of the Trump administration's hard-line policies, the Supreme Court on Wednesday will weigh its effort to remove legal protections from thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants in the United States.

If the administration wins the case, it would be able to continue with its plan to strip temporary protected status, or TPS, from about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. In the meantime, the protections remain in place.

President Donald Trump's administration has sought to revoke TPS for people from other countries too, including El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Afghanistan. The Supreme Court ruling could affect litigation pending in lower courts involving countries such as Somalia, Myanmar and Ethiopia.

Last year, the Supreme Court in two separate decisions allowed the administration to revoke the same kind of legal status from 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. The Trump administration argued in court papers in the new cases that those actions set a precedent that lower courts should have applied to the Haitian and Syrian immigrants too.

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The government argues that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decisions on revoking TPS designations are not reviewable in court.

The court will weigh that question, as well as others concerning whether Noem conducted the required consultation with the State Department to determine if conditions in both countries had improved. The plaintiffs also allege that the Haiti decision was made for unlawful discriminatory reasons.

The TPS program, in place since 1990, provides humanitarian relief to people from countries reeling from war, natural disasters or other catastrophes. Recipients have legal status in the U.S. and can apply for work authorization for up to 18 months, subject to extensions.

People from Haiti have been able to apply for TPS since a catastrophic earthquake rocked the country in 2010. Syrians became eligible in 2012 during a civil war when the country was ruled by dictator Bashar al-Assad, who fell from power in 2024.

Noem concluded that Haiti and Syria no longer met any of the conditions for protected status, saying conditions in both countries had improved.

The State Department currently tells Americans not to travel to either country, with both included on its “do not travel” list.

“Haiti has been under a State of Emergency since March 2024," the department says. "Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom.”

As for Syria, the department says that “no part of Syria is safe from violence.”

Without protected status, affected people are subject to deportation though the normal legal process. But they can seek other avenues to remain in the U.S., for example, by claiming asylum.

A Washington-based judge concluded in February in a case brought by TPS holders that Noem had failed to follow the correct procedures in terminating the legal status for Haiti and said there was evidence the decision was based on “anti-black and anti-Haitian animus.”

The judge pointed among other things to an X post from December in which Noem, referring to immigrants in general, said: “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE,” as well as Trump’s 2018 statement that Haiti was a “shithole country.”

In the other case, a federal judge in New York ruled in November in favor of seven Syrians who either already received legal status under the program or have applied for it.

In both cases, appeals courts declined to put the lower court decisions on hold.

In urging the court not to intervene, lawyers representing the Haitian challengers said that people would “risk death” if they were sent back to the Caribbean nation. They also pointed to comments made by Trump during the 2024 election baselessly claiming that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets as evidence of alleged racial bias.

Lawyers for the Syrian plaintiffs invoked the current instability in neighboring Iran in arguing how conditions in the region are unsafe, and questioned why the Trump administration had filed with the court on an emergency basis, seeking such an urgent decision, when some Syrians with TPS have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to immediately allow it to revoke TPS for both groups of plaintiffs but the justices in March deferred a decision on that front, instead deciding to hear oral arguments and issue a detailed ruling on the legal issues.

As of March 2025, about 1.3 million people from 17 countries had TPS, according to the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group.

Earlier this month, the House broke with Trump by voting to reinstate TPS for Haitians, with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats. But the Senate has yet to act and the White House has vowed to veto any legislation.