High court will review whether DHS can revoke protected status after lower courts blocked the policy
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for April 29 to consider whether the Department of Homeland Security can terminate temporary protected status for migrants from Haiti and Syria, after multiple lower courts prevented the policy from taking effect.
The cases—Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe—will be heard together, according to a court calendar released on March 27. The disputes center on the administration’s efforts to end TPS designations that allow individuals from certain countries facing instability to remain in the United States.
The high court agreed earlier in March to expedite review of the administration’s emergency applications, placing the arguments on its April docket, which typically marks the final month of hearings before the justices recess for the summer.
The Department of Justice had asked the court on March 11 to allow DHS to proceed with ending TPS protections for both groups after appellate rulings halted the move.
Temporary protected status for Haiti was originally granted in 2010 following a catastrophic earthquake during the Obama administration. In November 2025, DHS determined that conditions in Haiti no longer met the threshold for continued designation, stating there were “no extraordinary and temporary conditions” preventing return.
Similarly, Syria was granted TPS in 2012 due to civil war and widespread violence. DHS later concluded in September 2025 that conditions had changed following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government at the end of 2024 and subsequent efforts by new leadership to stabilize the country.
Federal courts intervened in both cases. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ruled on Feb. 2 that the termination of Haiti’s designation was likely influenced in part by “racial animus” and issued an order blocking its implementation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld that decision in a 2–1 ruling on March 6, finding DHS had unlawfully ended protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian nationals.
In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla blocked the administration’s attempt to revoke Syria’s TPS designation in November 2025, citing procedural deficiencies and concluding that the decision was improperly influenced by political considerations. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later declined to pause that ruling while litigation continues.
In filings before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that lower courts were overstepping their authority. “Lower courts are again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations,” Sauer wrote in a March 11 application.
He also challenged the legal basis used by lower courts, stating that judges had endorsed “a far-fetched and far-reaching equal-protection claim” tied to alleged racial animus, warning that such reasoning could “threaten to invalidate virtually every immigration policy of the current administration.”
Attorneys representing Haitian TPS recipient Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot urged the court to leave the lower court rulings in place. In a brief filed March 16, they stated, “Deportation to Haiti would place TPS holders in mortal danger.”
The filing described conditions in Haiti as severely deteriorated, citing widespread violence, limited access to essential services, and “famine-like conditions.” It added that many TPS recipients have lived in the United States for nearly two decades without incident and argued there is “no sudden emergency requiring their immediate expulsion.”
In the Syria-related case, attorneys for TPS recipient Dahlia Doe argued that the administration’s actions were part of a broader effort to eliminate the program entirely. In a separate filing submitted March 5, they wrote that the district court “correctly concluded that the [DHS] Secretary’s decisions were based on a predetermined plan to end TPS for every country—which is precisely what the Secretary has done to date.”
The Supreme Court’s decision in the consolidated cases is expected to clarify the scope of executive authority over immigration protections and the extent to which courts can intervene in such determinations.