The Supreme Court gave the go-ahead Thursday for the Department of Homeland Security to wind down a deportation amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, ruling that President Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status wasn’t motivated by racism.
The decision is a significant victory for presidential power and a severe rebuke to lower-court judges, particularly Democratic appointees, who had adopted the racism argument and moved to block the president.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said those judges had been too eager to step in and oppose Mr. Trump, even though the law specifically bars courts from interfering in these sorts of decisions.
The one area where the courts can play a role is in constitutional claims, such as the allegation Mr. Trump acted based on racist views of illegal immigrants or the countries at issue.
But Justice Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, said the lower courts got it wrong again.
“None of the cited statements by either the president or [then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem] was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,” Justice Alito wrote.
TPS is a humanitarian protection granted to migrants from countries that have suffered war, famine, natural disaster, epidemics or instability.
The program is designed to give those countries breathing space to recover without having to have more of their citizens sent home — and to give those foreigners a respite so they’re not sent back to dangerous conditions.
TPS grants a stay of deportation and gives migrants a chance to earn a work permit, allowing them to compete for jobs, claim some taxpayer benefits and put down roots. Short-term legal visitors can apply for TPS, but it’s most popular with illegal immigrants, who would otherwise face deportation.
While intended to be temporary, TPS has in fact often been used as a workaround to the usual immigration system.
Some Central American migrants have been living here under TPS since the turn of the century.
The case before the justices involved Haiti, first designated for TPS after the 2010 earthquake, and Syria, designated in 2012 amid that country’s civil war.
As of last year, when Mr. Trump moved to wind down TPS for the two nations, roughly 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians were protected.
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