Supreme Court rules Trump administration can revive restrictive immigration policy

WASHINGTON - In a ruling issued Thursday, the Supreme Court cleared the Trump administration to potentially revive an immigration policy once used to turn back migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The justices overturned a lower court order on Thursday blocking the practice used by presidents of both parties. It limited the number of people who could apply for asylum each day during President Donald Trump’s first term. Advocates said the tactic created a humanitarian crisis as thousands of people settled in unsafe makeshift shelters to await their turn. The Trump administration said it was necessary to deal with an increase of asylum seekers at the border.

Mullin v. Doe

What they're saying:

Comments by President Trump were cited by both sides in the Mullin v. Dahlia Doe opinion released Thursday, which addressed that case along with Trump v. Miot.

"Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago, and the statements cited by Miot respondents—especially those concerning Haiti and Haitian immigrants to this country—exemplify this development," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion. "But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people."

The other side:

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan cited the president's tweets about Haitians eating dogs and cats in an Ohio town, among others, as examples of what she felt was a racist basis for ending TPS.

"The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print," she wrote. "The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country."

What is TPS?

The backstory:

At issue were two cases, Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, involving the administration’s effort to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections from certain Haitian and Syrian migrants living in the U.S.

Arguments were heard in April on the legality of President Donald Trump's effort to end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants in the U.S. 

The TPS program currently covers roughly 1.3 million people fleeing war and natural disasters from 17 countries and allows them to live and work in the country for a limited time.

The administration argued the Department of Homeland Security has broad discretion to end some Temporary Protected Status protections for migrants from certain countries, arguing that the protections are intended to be temporary. Migrant advocates countered that federal law requires specific procedures and allows courts to review those decisions.

Trump's efforts to end TPS are not new. The administration has moved to revoke TPS designations for 13 countries since last January, and the arguments themselves are expected to focus closely not on the merits of individual designations under TPS, but the power of the courts to review the designations.

Trump has sought to unwind TPS designations, arguing they have been extended for far too long under former administrations, including President Joe Biden's.

Haitians were first granted TPS status in 2010 after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left some 1.5 million in the country homeless.

Both U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes and U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla blocked Trump's bid to end TPS for Haitian and Syrian nationals, respectively, earlier this year.

Reyes ruled that it was "substantially likely" that then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem had ended the Haitian TPS designation "because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants," and said she failed to consult with other agencies as required under the APA.

Failla's ruling said much of the same, noting that the administration's efforts to end TPS applied not only to Syrian migrants but to individuals from "virtually every country that has come up for consideration."

Trump officials have taken aim at district courts that have sought to block or pause their efforts to wind down TPS protections, accusing the judges of exceeding their authority and unlawfully intruding on the executive branch's authority, especially when it comes to immigration policy.