WASHINGTON — The nine justices of the Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that will decide whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians — and whether any federal court has the power to say no.
The cases, Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, were argued together in a packed courtroom while TPS holders and their advocates rallied outside with drums and chants and speeches from members of Congress. Inside, the justices heard nearly two hours of argument on questions that will shape the legal futures of roughly 1.3 million people from 17 countries who hold some form of TPS.
The headline question: Can courts review how the administration ended TPS? Or did Congress write a statute that puts that decision beyond judicial reach?
The government’s answer was emphatic. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that TPS is — by design — temporary, and that Congress handed the Homeland Security secretary sweeping authority to end it with virtually no judicial second-guessing. The no-review clause in the statute, he told the Court, covers not just the final termination decision but every step of the process leading to it.
“TPS designations have lasted years, sometimes decades,” Sauer argued. Congress, he said, never intended the program to become de facto permanent amnesty.
Attorneys for Haitian and Syrian TPS holders pushed back hard. Ahilan Arulanantham, arguing for the Syrians, told the Court the administration was asking for “a blank check” over the futures of more than a million people. The no-review clause, he argued, bars courts from questioning the ultimate discretionary call — not from checking whether DHS actually followed Congress’s mandatory procedures before making it. Those procedures include a genuine consultation with the State Department and a real assessment of current country conditions.
“The government reads this statute as a blank check,” Arulanantham said.
Geoffrey Pipoly, arguing for Haitian TPS holders, brought the argument down from the legal clouds and planted it in Port-au-Prince. More than 9,000 people were killed in Haiti last year. The homicide rate is approximately 76 per 100,000. Gangs control over 70 percent of the capital and key rural corridors. More than 5.8 million Haitians face acute food insecurity. Given all of that, Pipoly argued, the administration cannot credibly claim conditions have improved enough to justify terminating TPS.
The contradiction did not escape the liberal justices. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed Sauer on a tension that advocates outside had been hammering all morning: the State Department tells American citizens “do not travel” to Haiti and Syria. How, they asked, can the administration simultaneously argue those countries are safe enough to deport TPS holders back to?
