WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on whether the Trump administration may end the temporary protection that had been extended in the past to migrants who live and work in the United States.
At issue are legal protections for about 6,000 Syrians and up to 350,000 Haitians.
The court’s announcement signals the justices want to resolve this issue in a written opinion rather through emergency appeals.
Twice last year, the court’s conservatives set aside decisions from judges in San Francisco who said President Trump’s Homeland Security secretary had overstepped her authority.
Those cases involved the temporary protection status extended to about 600,000 Venezuelans.
But those decisions did not set clear precedents, and in recent weeks, judges in New York and Washington, D.C., blocked the administration’s plan to end the special protections for Haitians and Syrians.
Frustrated by what he labeled “indefensible” decisions, Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer advised the court to hear arguments and issue a written ruling on the issue.
The justices on Monday agreed to just that. Arguments will be heard in April, and a decision will be handed down by July.
Immigrant-rights advocates argued the repeal of the special protection would be cruel and unjust to migrants who have established lives and careers in this country.
In 1990, Congress authorized giving temporary shelter to non-citizens from countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disaster or “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent them from returning there.
In 2012, the Homeland Security secretary extended this protection to Syrians in response to a “brutal crackdown” engineered by its then-President Bashar al-Assad.
Last year, citing Assad’s fall from power, Trump’s Secretary Kristi Noem proposed to cancel the temporary protection for Syrians. Lawyers for the Syrians questioned how this could be seen as an emergency requiring an immediate ruling.
They said about 6,100 Syrians who have lived here lawfully for years.
They are “highly sought-after doctors and medical professionals, reporters, students, teachers, business owners, caretakers, and others who have been repeatedly vetted and by definition have virtually no criminal history. The government apparently needs urgent authority to send them to a country in the middle of an active war,” the lawyers said.
In 2010, the Obama administration extended the protection to Haiti after an earthquake caused death and damage in Port-au-Prince, the capital.
Judges in New York and Washington blocked those repeals and said the high court had given “no explanation” for its decision upholding the repeal for Venezuelans.
Those judges said the Supreme Court’s earlier orders orders “involved a TPS designation of a different country, with different factual circumstances, and different grounds for resolution by the district court.”
Sauer pointed to a provision in the 1990 law that says judges have no authority to second-guess the government’s decision to end it.
“There is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection,” the law says.
In the three weeks since Trump’s attorney filed his emergency appeal, there have been two significant changes since then.
Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And his war launched against Iran threatens countries throughout the Mideast, including Syria.
In agreeing to hear the pair of cases, the justices did not disturb the lower court rulings that blocked the repeals for now.
