How the Supreme Court deepened uncertainty over Temporary Protected Status

Legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians in the U.S. have ended after the Supreme Court upheld the termination of their Temporary Protected Status, a ruling that could reshape the program's future.The big picture: The justices limited courts' ability to review Homeland Security's TPS decisions — making challenges harder and leaving hundreds of thousands of people at risk of losing legal status, work authorization and protection from deportation.Established in 1990, TPS protects nationals of designated countries fleeing extraordinary circumstances."The ripple effects of this are going to be really big" and "really impactful for not only the TPS holders themselves, but for everyone in their communities," says Esther Sung, the Justice Action Center's legal director.State of play: The Trump administration has moved to end TPS for nationals of more than a dozen countries, complicating legal challenges after the high court's decision.At the start of President Trump's term, per the American Immigration Council, around 1.3 million people had TPS. Since then, hundreds of thousands have lost TPS protections.What they're saying: DHS pointed Axios to government webpages on TPS, said recipients without another lawful immigration status will be subject to deportation "once TPS ends," and urged them to use the administration's self-deportation app."If people want to come to our country to work, they need to do that by coming here the legal way," a DHS spokesperson said Tuesday, rejecting the argument that ending TPS would hurt industries including health care, construction, logistics and restaurants.USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler said DHS was "upholding the rule of law" and argued the Biden administration improperly used TPS to extend protections beyond the program's intended scope.Yes, but: The revocations are "absolutely without precedent, by huge orders of magnitude of any sort of revocation of status in the modern immigration system," says FWD.us president Todd Schulte.Advocates warn the terminations could deliver an economic blow.

Roughly 80% of TPS holders participated in the labor market, per a 2025 Penn study. "I think people are going to really want to know why it is that the person who was their kid's teacher, the person who was a parent in their kids' classroom, left or got taken — or the healthcare worker, or the construction worker,…