SCOTUS Ruling on TPS
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) claims “it’s horrific” that the “Supreme Court is letting Trump ignore laws set by Congress and send hardworking, legal immigrants into imminent danger in Haiti, Syria, and other violent countries.”
IN FACT, Trump is obeying the law, while other presidents routinely abused it to allow aliens with “temporary” amnesty to stay in the U.S. indefinitely. Here are the specifics:
- In 1990, Congress passed and President George H. Bush signed a law that allows the Attorney General — who is under the authority of the President — to grant and rescind “temporary protected status and work authorization” to “aliens” who are already in the U.S. if their homelands are under duress.
- The power to grant and rescind TPS was transferred from the Attorney General to the DHS Secretary — who is also under the authority of the President — “with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002.”
- Per the law, the DHS Secretary can grant or extend TPS in 18-month increments when there is an “armed conflict” that “would pose a serious threat” to “personal safety,” or an “earthquake, flood, drought, epidemic, or other environmental disaster,” or “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that “prevent aliens” from “returning” to their homelands “in safety.”
- As explained by a federal appeals court, “TPS essentially freezes an alien’s position within the immigration system,” but “it does not erase the effects of an alien’s previous unlawful entry or presence in the country.” Thus, they can be removed as soon as the designation is terminated.
- The law allows the DHS Secretary to “terminate the designation” with 60 days’ notice if he or she determines that the foreign nation “no longer continues to meet the conditions” that led to the original decision.
- The first TPS designation was given in 1990 to aliens from El Salvador for 18 months due to civil unrest, and another El Salvador designation was given in 2001 due to “two major earthquakes.”
- TPS extensions and other executive actions by the administrations of George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have allowed aliens from El Salvador to stay in the U.S. for decades.
- In 2018, the first Trump administration terminated TPS for El Salvador, “whose almost 200,000 nationals accounted for about 60% of all TPS recipients at the time.”
- When the Trump administration terminated TPS for El Salvador, it gave the aliens 18 months’ notice — or six times the legally required 60 days — “to arrange for their departure or to seek an alternative lawful immigration status in the United States, if eligible.”
- Even though the law explicitly states that “there is no judicial review of any determination” of the DHS Secretary about a TPS “termination,” an Obama-appointed judge ordered an injunction against it, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals prevented its implementation until Joe Biden became president and rescinded Trump’s decision.
- In his last month in office, Biden “extended El Salvador’s TPS for another 18 months, through September 9, 2026.”
- The New York Times recently published an article about TPS by highlighting the plight of a recipient from El Salvador who has had a “valid Social Security number and permission to work in the United States” for “nearly three decades.”
- Likewise, Somalia was designated for TPS in 1991, and “that designation remains in effect 35 years later,” along with Nicaragua and Honduras, which “retain designations that are more than 25 years old.”
- As of March 31, 2025, 17 countries “were designated for TPS,” and 1,297,635 aliens were “protected by TPS.”
- While protected, TPS recipients can work, collect Social Security, receive public assistance in states that don’t ban it, receive free medical care in emergency rooms and for childbirths, have children who receive birthright citizenship, and become eligible for amnesty and full citizenship if the Democratic Party Platform is enacted.
- Contrary to Warren, the Supreme Court’s recent 6–3 ruling notes that federal law explicitly bars “judicial review of any determination” of TPS by the DHS Secretary and emphasizes that “this text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad.”
- The ruling also states there is no credible evidence the Trump administration terminated Haiti’s TPS designation “because of the racial makeup of that country’s population.”
- In response to the allegation that Trump was motivated by “racial bias” because he called Haiti a “sh**hole country,” the majority wrote that there’s nothing inherently racist about using a “harshly unfavorable description of living conditions” in TPS countries, especially since the “criteria for TPS designations guarantee that many, if not most, designated countries have such characteristics.”
