The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in the Trump administration’s bid to immediately end humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, potentially forcing them to return to dangerous conditions in their home countries.
President Trump’s attempt to terminate the program known as Temporary Protected Status is a pillar of his aggressive anti-immigration agenda, and the court’s ruling will most likely have implications for migrants from more than a dozen troubled nations who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States.
The justices fast-tracked two cases, one involving more than 350,000 Haitians and another covering about 6,000 Syrians. The administration argues that it has followed proper procedures to terminate protections for the two nations, but lower courts have found that the decisions had been preordained and not based on meaningful analysis.
The class-action lawsuits were filed by T.P.S. holders, including engineers, students, doctors and caregivers, who want to continue to work and live in the United States because their lawyers say they could be killed if they are forced to return to Syria or Haiti.
Mr. Trump has taken particular aim at Haitians in his criticism of immigration policies. During the oral argument on Wednesday, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said Mr. Trump’s statements about Haitian and other immigrants showed racial animus.
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The legal dispute: The government and lawyers for the T.P.S. holders agree that the law allows the administration to remove countries from the program. But immigrant rights advocates want the court to order the administration to restart its review process to make fact-based, good-faith assessments before ending protections.
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The program: The Temporary Protected Status program was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. Haitians first received protections in 2010 after a devastating earthquake, and the program was extended several times. The first Trump administration extended protections for Syrians that were first enacted in 2012, citing “a brutal crackdown” by then-President Bashar al-Assad.
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Venezuelan migrants: The Supreme Court previously allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to lift protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans who had been living in the United States. But the emergency orders in that case did not include the justices’ legal reasoning.
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A packed term: The cases were heard on the final day of arguments in a court term that began in October and has already included challenges to other major parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda. In February, the court ruled against the legality of the president’s sweeping tariffs, and the justices will soon decide whether Mr. Trump can end the longstanding guarantee of birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born babies of illegal immigrants and certain foreign visitors.
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