April 28, 2026, 3:01 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON − Syria was embroiled in a violent civil war when Adham, a Syrian now in his forties, came to the United States in 2018 on an academic scholarship.
After earning his master’s degree, Adham − who asked to be identified by that pseudonym because he fears retaliation from the Trump administration − was allowed to stay in the U.S. through a humanitarian relief program for people from dangerous countries.
Since then, Adham has worked as a pharmacist, grateful for having been given “a place to settle and a moment to breathe.”
So he was stunned last September when the Trump administration abruptly ended the Temporary Protected Status program for approximately 6,000 Syrians living in the United States, despite the still perilous conditions in his home country. Adham and his wife, who also works in health care, had 60 days to leave or face potential deportation.
“In a matter of weeks, we were facing the prospect of going from legal residents to people hunted by law enforcement,” he said.
The Supreme Court will review on April 29 the administration’s push to end deportation protections for Syrians and for 350,000 Haitians – including whether the decision to terminate protections for Haitians was racially motivated.
The case could affect the future of the entire humanitarian program, which is providing legal residency and the ability to work to about 1.3 million immigrants. Ending the program for everyone, immigrant rights advocates say, would be the largest stripping in U.S. history of legal status from people who currently have it.
Curtailing the Temporary Protected Status program is a significant part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, which also includes his attempt to limit birthright citizenship that the Supreme Court is already considering.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs’
Trump has referred to the program as a “little trick.” He’s been particularly vocal about ending it for Haitians, a group he’s repeatedly maligned – including falsely accusing Haitians living in Ohio of eating people’s pets. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised “large deportations in Springfield.”
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said during a presidential debate. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Elected officials and others have defended the immigrants in Ohio and elsewhere, saying they have become valuable members of their communities and contribute to the local economy, taking on jobs in health care, elder care and other industries that are hard to fill.
Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has said the Haitians have helped revive Springfield.
“Springfield is an industrial city, manufacturing city that was down,” DeWine said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in February. “It has been coming back. And frankly, one of the reasons it’s coming back is because of the Haitians who are working there.”
But critics say the humanitarian program, which was supposed to be temporary, is being exploited.
“In practice, what’s happened is once TPS has been granted in the past, administrations have always just consistently renewed it. They never terminate,” said James Rogers, a lawyer with American First Legal, a group supporting Trump’s policy priorities.
Protections from war, natural disasters or other crises
Created in 1990, the program allows the homeland security secretary to protect immigrants already in the U.S. from being deported to countries experiencing war, natural disasters or other crises.
The immigrants, who must pass background checks, are also allowed to work.
The protections initially last for up to 18 months but are automatically extended unless the government determines that conditions in a country have sufficiently improved.
Since Trump returned to office in 2025, his administration has moved to end protections for immigrants from 13 of the 17 countries that previous administrations deemed unsafe. Renewal deadlines for the remaining four countries – including Ukraine – will be triggered in the coming months.
Haiti deemed too dangerous after earthquake
Haiti was first designated as too dangerous in 2010 because of a devastating earthquake. (Two of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s seven children were adopted from Haiti, one after the earthquake. Barrett told USA TODAY last year that a previous case involving Haitian migrants was a good example of how judges must put their feelings aside and not be swayed “by things that move you emotionally and situations in which you have very deep empathy.”)
Haiti remains under a national state of emergency, and the State Department warns Americans not to go to the Caribbean country because of civil unrest, limited health care, crime, terrorism and the risk of kidnapping. Anyone traveling to Haiti or to other countries under the government’s highest risk warning are encouraged to leave DNA samples with a doctor and dental records with a family member in case they’re needed to identify remains.
Decapitated Haitian women dumped in a river
In February, the decapitated bodies of four Haitian women deported from the U.S. several months earlier were found dumped in a river, according to lawyers for the Haitians.
Three months earlier, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had said parts of Haiti were “suitable to return to” and allowing Haitians to remain in the United States was no longer in the national interest. The secretary cited the executive order Trump signed his first day back in office – titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” – that laid the groundwork for his crackdown on immigration.
Ending the program for Haitians, Noem also said, “reflects a necessary and strategic vote of confidence” in that nation’s future.
Noem − who was fired in March − reached a similar conclusion about Syria, which is also subject to the State Department’s highest-level travel warning.
While “some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria,” she concluded, “the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.”
The United Nations estimated that more than 1.2 million Syrians have returned to their home country since the regime of Bashar al-Assad fell in 2024, according to the Justice Department.
Terminations blocked by judges
Over the past year, Syrians and Haitians have challenged the terminations and judges blocked them from going into effect while their lawsuits hang in the balance.
The Justice Department argues not just that the terminations were done legally, but also that the law creating the program bars judges from even reviewing any part of the government’s decision-making process.
“Indeed, Congress barred judicial review in sweeping terms,” the department’s lawyers wrote in a filing. “The Court should respect Congress’ choice to leave quintessential Executive Branch decisions to the Executive Branch.”
Lawyers for the immigrants contend that Congress didn’t prevent courts from evaluating whether the government followed the required procedures for making its determination.
Otherwise, lawyers for the Haitians wrote in an April filing, the administration could rule a country in or out “based on the flip of a coin or the Secretary’s preference for a particular flavor of ice cream.”
The challengers say they can show Noem didn’t adequately consult with the State Department about the conditions in Syria and Haiti and instead manufactured reasons to reach her pre-determined outcome.
“What you have in the situation now is really stark incongruities between what the (Department of Homeland Security) is saying and what the State Department is saying about these countries,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, the lawyer who will be representing the Syrians before the justices. “We think the statute requires them to actually find whether the country is safe to accept a return or not.”
A researcher at the homeland security department complained in a 2025 email, since turned over to the courts, that she was being forced to make conclusions about the program that she believed were not supported by evidence.
Racial discrimination?
A separate question in the Haitians’ lawsuit is whether the administration’s termination of the program was racially motivated, a potential violation of constitutional protections against discrimination.
“The most damning evidence is President Trump’s own words, his own actions,” said Sejal Zota, one of the lawyers representing the Haitian immigrants. “For years, he has used violent and dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants of color.”
During a December speech in Pennsylvania, for example, Trump referred to Haiti as a “hellhole.”
“Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let’s have a few from Denmark,” Trump said, recounting how in 2018 he had complained about immigrants coming from “shithole” countries. “Send us some nice people.”
Were Trump’s comments taken out of context?
The Justice Department said Trump’s comments are being taken out of context and were not connected to Noem’s decision to end deportation protections for Haitians.
“None remotely justifies an inference that the Secretary was motivated by an `invidious discriminatory purpose,’” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in a filing.
Trump is counting on the justices to reject the discrimination charge as a majority did in 2018 when upholding his immigration travel ban against predominantly Muslim countries.
And in 2020, the court blocked the Trump administration from ending protections for immigrants brought to the court illegally as children – but did so without finding the move was racially motivated.
Immigrant advocates say the previous situations were different.
“In those cases, you had these sort of general anti-Muslim, or general anti-immigrant sentiments. These statements are about our clients specifically,” Geoff Pipoly, one of the lawyers representing the Haitians, said on the Lawfare Daily podcast. “It’s not so easy to brush it off as the court has done in the past.”
`A war on this congressional statute’
The dispute reached the high court on the preliminary issue of whether the administration’s decision to end protections should remain on hold while the challenge is being fully litigated.
How the court decides that question will affect not just the immediate futures of the Syrians and Haitians in the U.S., but also how easy it will be for the Trump administration to effectively do away with the temporary protected status program.
“This really is about a war on this congressional statute,” Arulanantham said.
In the meantime, Adham said he and his wife go to bed each night “not knowing what tomorrow looks like.”
A decision is expected by the end of June or early July.
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