By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it will hear arguments over the legality of a move by Donald Trump’s administration to revoke temporary legal protections for more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians living in the United States, part of the Republican president’s mass deportation agenda.

The justices for now kept in place two judicial orders that have blocked the administration’s move to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haitian and Syrian nationals while legal challenges to the policies proceeded. The cases will be argued next month.

Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has moved to end TPS status for about a dozen countries. The protections are available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation.

The Supreme Court in October let the ​administration terminate TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants.

Kristi Noem, a Trump appointee then serving as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, determined last November that there were “no extraordinary and temporary conditions” in Haiti that would prevent Haitian migrants from returning to the Caribbean country. The U.S. State Department currently warns against travel to Haiti “due ​to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest and limited healthcare.”

Haitians ‌were first given ⁠TPS in 2010 under Democratic former President Barack Obama after a devastating earthquake struck their country.

The U.S. government repeatedly extended the status, most recently under Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration, which cited “simultaneous economic, security, political and health crises” in Haiti, fueled by gangs and a lack of a functioning government. That extension had given Haitians living in the United States protections through February 3, 2026.

Washington-based U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ruled in February in a class-action lawsuit brought by Haitians challenging the administration’s move. Reyes found that Noem likely violated the procedures required ​to terminate the protected status of Haitian immigrants as well as the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

“Plaintiffs ​charge that Secretary Noem preordained ⁠her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants. This seems substantially likely,” Reyes wrote.

Referencing a December social media post by Noem, Reyes added, “Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the (Administrative Procedure Act) to apply faithfully the facts to the law ⁠in implementing the ​TPS program.”

Lower federal appeals courts refused to halt Reyes’ order, as well as a similar order by another judge in litigation brought by a group of Syrian migrants. 

The Syrian migrants sued after Noem announced in September that Syria’s TPS designation would end. Noem said that the situation there “no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.”

In November, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan blocked the administration from terminating TPS for Syrians. Failla said the Department of Homeland Security had not followed proper procedures for revoking temporary status, including reviewing conditions in Syria, and that the decision was improperly influenced by politics.

The Justice Department told the Supreme Court in a filing that lower courts were flouting its prior orders in the cases involving Venezuela’s TPS designation. 

The administration had asked that the Supreme Court hear arguments in the dispute given the “lower courts’ persistent disregard” for the Supreme Court’s actions.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

Brought to you by www.srnnews.com