Supreme Court to weigh Trump bid to end Haiti, Syria TPS

The Supreme Court’s clash over Haiti and Syria is about far more than two countries. At stake is how much power a president has to unwind Temporary Protected Status for large immigrant populations, a decision that could ripple across the 1.3 million people now covered by TPS in 17 countries.

The justices combined Noem v. Doe, involving Syrian nationals, and Trump v. Miot, involving Haitians, for oral argument in the April 27-29, 2026 session and are expected to rule by late June or early July. The cases challenge the Trump administration’s effort, carried out by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, to end TPS for about 6,000 Syrians and about 350,000 Haitians, even as lower-court orders have kept both protections in place for now.

Congress created TPS in 1990 to let the Homeland Security secretary shield people from countries facing armed conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary and temporary conditions so they can live and work in the United States. Syria was first designated in 2012 after Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on anti-government dissent, and that protection was renewed repeatedly for 13 years before Assad’s regime was overthrown in 2024 and he fled to Russia. Haiti has had TPS since 2010 after its devastating earthquake, with the scale of the program expanding sharply over time: the Department of Homeland Security estimated 57,000 Haitians were eligible in 2011, 155,000 in 2021 and 520,694 by July 2024.

Noem announced in 2025 that Haiti’s TPS would end on Aug. 3, 2025, and that Syria’s TPS would end on Nov. 21, 2025. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said a federal judge in New York stayed the Syria termination on Nov. 19, 2025, and that employment authorization documents issued under Syria TPS with certain expiration dates were automatically extended by court order. The Haiti fight has moved through similar legal challenges.

The cases are being watched closely beyond Port-au-Prince and Syrian-American communities. People from more than a dozen other TPS countries are following the outcome, especially an estimated 200,000 Salvadorans. Advocates say the ruling could effectively reshape the future of TPS by making it easier for presidents to reverse humanitarian protections, while the Department of Homeland Security has argued the program has been overused and should return to being truly temporary. The decision will test not only the reach of executive power but also the stability of a program that has become a lifeline for families, employers and communities across the country.