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April 29, 2026, 9:56 a.m. ET
Live Updates: Supreme Court Will Consider Trump’s Bid to End Deportation Protections
The justices will hear two cases covering hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and Syria with Temporary Protected Status who could be forced out of the country.
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The Supreme Court fast-tracked two cases, involving more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians the Trump administration has sought to expel.
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Eric Lee for The New York Times
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April 29, 2026, 9:22 a.m. ET
Ann E. Marimow
Here’s the latest.
The Supreme Court will hear 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 for the review and termination of 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, and his disparagement of them is likely to be highlighted during oral arguments. Lawyers in that matter have said the administration was motivated by prejudice, citing the president’s false accusations during the 2024 campaign about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating their neighbors’ pets.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
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 for these countries to make fact-based, good-faith assessments before ending protections.
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, including after the assassination of the country’s last elected president in 2021. The first Trump administration extended protections for Syrians that were first enacted in 2012, citing “a brutal crackdown” by then-President Bashar al-Assad.
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 that did not include the justices’ legal reasoning.
A packed term:
The cases are being 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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April 29, 2026, 9:56 a.m. ET
Abbie VanSickle
I’m in the press room at the Supreme Court, where we are waiting for opinions. The justices will announce any decisions shortly after 10 a.m. We will get an idea of how many rulings will be released based on the number of boxes that court personnel carry into the press room. A single box typically means one or two opinions for the day.
April 29, 2026, 9:51 a.m. ET
Adam Liptak
The oral argument may shed light on the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket.’
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The Supreme Court in Washington.
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Al Drago for The New York Times
The Supreme Court has twice before addressed the Temporary Protected Status program that is the subject of Wednesday’s argument, in brief orders on what critics call the court’s shadow docket. Wednesday’s argument may shed light on the legal force of such terse rulings.
In May, the justices let the Trump administration temporarily lift protections for some 300,000 immigrants from Venezuela, blocking
a lower court’s ruling
. The
Supreme Court’s order
gave no reasons, which is not usual when the court acts on emergency applications. But the court’s failure to explain itself on such a consequential matter was the
subject of criticism
.
The court’s use of unexplained orders in fast-tracked cases arising from major presidential initiatives
has its roots in a 2016 ruling
that halted President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his attempt to address climate change through executive action. The court’s order in that case, like the one in May giving the Trump administration a green light to deport Venezuelan migrants, contained no reasoning at all.
The case on the T.P.S. program returned to Judge Edward M. Chen of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, who in September
again ruled
in favor of the immigrants after receiving additional evidence. He said he was not bound by the Supreme Court’s order in May, noting that it “did not provide any specific rationale for its decision.”
The Supreme Court then paused Judge Chen’s second ruling, too. The
court’s second order
, which was quite terse, said the unexplained first one was binding. “Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not,” said the brief unsigned opinion of a majority of the justices. “The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here.”
In asking the Supreme Court to let the administration lift protections for
Syrian
and
Haitian
migrants, Solicitor General D. John Sauer relied on the two earlier orders concerning Venezuelans. Among the questions Mr. Sauer asked the justices to resolve was “what to make of this court’s interim orders.”
In
a supporting brief
, more than 175 former judges wrote that emergency orders without real reasoning should have no legal weight.
“Whatever the force of the orders this court issues in cases on the emergency docket that explain the basis for the court’s decision,” the brief said, “its unexplained emergency decisions are not binding, or even especially informative, when lower courts exercise their judicial power in a different case involving different facts and circumstances.”
That was in keeping with
remarks by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in 2021
, when he said the court’s emergency orders did not create precedents.
On Monday, the court issued a
one-sentence decision
in a redistricting case. It said it had ruled “for the reasons set forth” in an earlier
emergency order
in the case, which provided five paragraphs of reasoning for what was ostensibly an interim measure temporarily halting
a 160-page decision
from a divided three-judge panel of a lower court.
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April 29, 2026, 9:34 a.m. ET
Abbie VanSickle
Reporting from Washington
Justice Barrett has personal ties to Haiti.
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Justice Amy Coney Barrett has adopted two children from Haiti.
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Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
As the Trump administration seeks to convince the justices that it can end a program shielding about 350,000 Haitians from deportation, one justice will be listening with firsthand experience with Haiti’s turmoil.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the court’s conservatives and often a critical vote in high-profile cases, adopted two children who were born in Haiti. During her
confirmation hearing
in October 2020, Justice Barrett said that she and her husband, Jesse, decided to adopt after they met other couples who had adopted children from other countries.
In 2004, she and her husband
visited an orphanage
in a suburb of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and ultimately adopted a 14-month-old girl, Vivian, from the facility.
Justice Barrett
has said the couple chose Haiti
because of the country’s overwhelming poverty and its proximity to the United States, so “we could go as a family and be involved in Haiti as the children got older.”
She told senators during her confirmation hearing that she was struck by the “the lack of access to basic things like antibiotics” at the orphanage and that the experience had made her “appreciate the fact that we had access to health care.”
She described her daughter’s condition when she first joined the Barrett family as “so weak that we were told she might never talk or walk normally” and said she was grateful her daughter eventually grew strong and healthy.
Justice Barrett has said that the couple had wanted to adopt again soon after but ran into paperwork issues when they tried to adopt a boy from the same orphanage. “It looked like it wasn’t going to happen,” she said in
a 2019 interview
at the Notre Dame Club of Washington, D.C. “So mentally and emotionally, we had closed that door.”
But after a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, the State Department lifted some paperwork requirements for children whose adoptions were in progress, which included the Barretts’ son. The devastating quake also figured into the U.S. government’s decision to extend Temporary Protected Status to Haitians, allowing them to live and work legally in the United States. The Trump administration’s effort to end those protections are at the heart of the case being heard on Wednesday.
Her husband went to Florida in 2010 to pick up their son, John Peter, and to bring him to the family’s home in South Bend, Ind. Justice Barrett described her son’s surprise when he first stepped out into the cold, snowy Midwest winter, adding, “once that shock wore off, J.P. assumed the happy-go-lucky attitude that is still his signature trait.”
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April 29, 2026, 9:20 a.m. ET
Hamed Aleaziz
The T.P.S. clampdown is part of Trump’s broader immigration agenda.
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President Trump speaking in the Oval Office this month.
Credit...
Eric Lee for The New York Times
President Trump promised during the 2024 campaign to conduct mass deportations and undo Biden-era immigration programs.
His efforts to dramatically alter the country’s immigration system began on his first day back in office when he banned refugees from entering the country, ended access to asylum at the southern border and canceled a program that allows migrants to enter the United States through a mobile app.
It was just the beginning.
Since Mr. Trump took office, his administration has targeted Democratic-run cities with aggressive immigration operations. It banned migrants from more than 35 countries from entering the United States. It tried to end the practice of birthright citizenship, hired thousands of new ICE officers, allowed the agency the power to enter homes without a judicial warrant and shipped migrants to far-flung countries to which they have no connection.
The plan to end Temporary Protected Status was always a core strategy as well. The program has long been viewed skeptically by conservatives who believed it was being abused to allow migrants to stay indefinitely and was a draw for others to cross into the country illegally.
The cancellation also works hand in hand with Mr. Trump’s goals of mass deportation. If migrants lose protection through T.P.S., they will become potential targets for ICE to arrest and deport.
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April 29, 2026, 9:12 a.m. ET
Mattathias Schwartz
Shortly before 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, as the Supreme Court prepared to hear arguments over the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke deportation protections known as Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., from hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants, a crowd had already gathered in front of the court’s plaza.
A band of day laborers from the Los Angeles area, Los Jornaleros Del Norte, were playing traditional Latin American music, part of a series of performances from artists representing the cultures of T.P.S. recipients that would continue throughout the day, said José Palma, coordinator of the National TPS Alliance.
“While the hearing is going on and the lawyers are making their arguments to the justices, we will be making our own argument out here to U.S. society,” he said, over the sound of guitar and accordion. “We’ll be showing the public who we are.”
April 29, 2026, 9:07 a.m. ET
Madeleine Ngo
What to know about T.P.S. for Haitians and Syrians.
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A vigil in Miami in February for Haitians living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status.
Credit...
Giorgio Viera/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Wednesday in cases that could have major consequences for the Trump administration’s aggressive push to end the Temporary Protected Status program.
At the heart of the cases are hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians who were first granted deportation protections through the program more than a decade ago. Since then, they have filled jobs across the country in critical industries like health care and agriculture.
Here’s what we know about the Haitians and Syrians with T.P.S.
T.P.S. for Haitians
The Obama administration first granted the status to Haitians in 2010 after
a powerful earthquake
devastated their country. About
350,000 Haitians
are authorized to live and work in the United States through the program.
The protections were repeatedly
extended
as Haiti struggled to fully recover. Other crises also struck the country, including a
cholera epidemic
that weakened the nation’s public health system.
In late 2017, the Trump administration said it
would end the program,
contending that Haiti had made enough progress in its recovery. But legal challenges blocked the termination.
The Biden administration later announced
a new designation
for Haiti, saying protections were needed because of security concerns, social unrest, human rights abuses, poverty and a lack of basic resources in the country.
Haitian T.P.S. holders live across the United States, including in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Many are
concentrated in the Miami region
, working in hospitality, agriculture and long-term care.
Senior-care providers have condemned the Trump administration’s efforts to end T.P.S. for Haiti, saying the move
would deplete their work forces
and worsen an already severe shortage of caregivers.
More than 10,000 Haitians live in Springfield, Ohio, which became the subject of scrutiny after President Trump
repeated false internet rumors
about the community. Many immigrants had
settled in Springfield
, drawn by the low cost of living and ample jobs.
T.P.S. for Syrians
About 6,100 Syrians are living in the United States with T.P.S., a much smaller number compared with Haitians. The Obama administration first granted the status in 2012 after civil war broke out in Syria. The designation was extended until the Trump administration
announced
in September that it would terminate the program.
Some immigration-policy experts
immediately criticized
the decision, saying that conditions in Syria were still unstable. Syrian-led advocacy groups have also denounced the change, which was
paused by a legal fight
.
In late 2024,
rebels ended
the Assad family’s brutal rule in Syria after more than a decade of civil war. Although Syria’s new leaders have sought to
move away from dictatorship
, concerns remain over ongoing violence and shortages of food and
safe water
.
Thousands of Syrians are authorized to work in the United States through the program, with many employed in the health care industry as doctors and nurses, according to advocacy groups.
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April 29, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET
Ann E. Marimow
Reporting from Washington
The Trump administration is seeking to end humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Image
A candlelight vigil in Miami in February for Haitians living under Temporary Protected Status, which the Trump administration is trying to end.
Credit...
Giorgio Viera/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider whether the Trump administration can immediately end humanitarian protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians to live and work legally in the United States.
President Trump has moved to terminate a program, known as Temporary Protected Status, that has provided humanitarian relief to migrants from more than a dozen troubled nations by allowing them to settle temporarily in the United States.
The two cases the justices will hear involve more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians the Trump administration has sought to expel from the United States, potentially forcing them to return to dangerous conditions in their home countries. The court’s ruling, expected in late June or early July, will also likely have implications for more than one million people from other countries whose protections under the program the administration has sought to terminate.
The justices fast-tracked the cases, scheduling them for the final day of arguments in a court term that began in October and has already included challenges to other major aspects 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.
Like his birthright citizenship restrictions, the president’s plan to end T.P.S. protections is part of Mr. Trump’s broader effort to crack down on legal and illegal immigration. His heated rhetoric about immigrants and
disparagement of Haitians
, in particular, are likely to be highlighted during oral arguments.
At issue is a federal program created by Congress in 1990 with bipartisan support that now gives the homeland security secretary authority to grant temporary refuge to citizens of countries affected by armed conflict, natural disaster or other catastrophes, if they are already in the United States.
The law allows the secretary to periodically review such protections, terminating or extending them for certain countries. It lays out that the secretary must consult with federal agencies, review conditions in a country, and then make a decision based on those assessments.
Lawyers for the Haitians and Syrians, who filed lawsuits in Washington and New York, said Kristi Noem, who until March 24 was the homeland security secretary, failed to take those steps. Instead, they accuse her of ending the programs based on political considerations and orders from the president.
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.
D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, told the justices in legal filings that the courts cannot second guess the secretary’s decision-making steps. He pointed to the text of the
statute
, which
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