The Supreme Court said on Thursday that the Trump administration could override procedural rules governing the “temporary protected status” (TPS) program, which allows foreign nationals from war-torn or unsafe countries to stay temporarily in the United States until their home country is stabilized.
Decision in Mullin v. Doe it was issued along party lines, with all six Republicans joining Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, and all three Democrats joining Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent.
Federal law allows the Department of Homeland Security to grant temporary protected status to noncitizens who are in the United States during an “armed crisis,” natural disasters, or other disasters make their country unsafe. Temporary protection status should be, well, temporary. DHS must therefore periodically review the list of countries whose citizens may seek protected status, and remove countries from the list when the conflict in those countries subsides. People with TPS can also work in the United States while present legally.
The Trump administration, however, is hostile to this plan and so far removed TPS designation for all 13 countries which have come for inspection. President Donald Trump also issued an executive order requiring his cabinet to ensure that TPS designations are “properly limited and limited in time to the extent necessary to meet the written requirements of the law.”
Mullin v. Doe it was about the Trump administration’s decision to revoke TPS from Syrians and Haitians living in the United States. Syrians previously had TPS status because of the civil war that ousted its president in 2024. Haitians had TPS status because their nation has no stable government following a series of disasters including a major earthquake and the assassination of the Haitian president.
Now that the Court has allowed Trump’s DHS to terminate these TPS designations without first complying with procedural rules written into federal law, large numbers of people who were previously allowed to live in relative safety in the United States could be deported. That decision can affect Only 300,000 Haitians.
The decision is difficult to compare to the examples of the Court, but it is also not surprising. The Republican majority on the Court often applies special procedural rules to Trump. Among other things, the Judges of the Republic have greatly expanded the Court of “.shadow docket,” a mix of cases that the Court often decides on an expedited basis, to give Trump a quick way to stop lower court decisions he doesn’t like.
In fairness, it doesn’t matter what the Court has decided Mullin v. Doethe decision was unlikely to provide permanent relief to anyone, because the case was primarily about whether DHS followed procedural law. If the decision were reversed, Trump’s DHS would still be able to terminate the temporary protected status of the Syrians and Haitians after following due process.
But a decision in favor of these noncitizens could buy them months more of safety, while DHS goes through due process.
What the specific legal issue was Mullin v. Doe?
Everyone involved in this case agrees that DHS can eventually last TPS. Federal law says “no judicial review for any decision of the (Secretary of Homeland Security) regarding the appointment, or termination or extension of the designation. So the law is very bad news for these plaintiffs.
That said, the plaintiffs’ attorneys made a strong argument that the word “determination,” as used in this law, applies only to the DHS secretary’s final conclusion that a particular country is safe enough to justify terminating TPS. Federal law also has several procedural requirements that DHS must follow before making that final decision, and several lower courts have held that they can review the Trump administration’s failure to comply with those procedural rules.
Plaintiffs inside Mullin v. Doe specifically argued that DHS failed to adequately consult with the State Department before making its decision to end temporary protected status for Syrians and Haitians.
As Kagan points out in her dissent, the Court held just last year that the word “decision” means “resolve and settle the dispute,” instead of procedural steps that contribute to making that decision McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center (1991), which held that the term “decision” refers to “a single act” that does not include “the procedure used in making decisions.”
So, while the relief sought by the plaintiffs was narrow — again, they only sought an order requiring Trump’s DHS to follow procedural rules before taking away their protected status — decisions like that. McNary it was found that these plaintiffs were entitled to that relief.
However, Alito claims that these cases are not important, saying that DHS’s failure to follow the procedure is an important part of his final decision to end the temporary protection status that the court may not review DHS’s procedural errors.
There was also a racial question about how Haitians are treated
Another issue in this case is whether the decision to end the Haitians’ temporary protected status was unconstitutional because it was racially motivated. In her opposition, Kagan cites a long list of Trump statements that are “adopted by racism and tropes,” including Trump’s false claim that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s dogs, and claims that they are “poisoning the blood” of the United States.
There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a racist. But Alito has a good response to Kagan’s argument that the decision to end TPS for Haitians was made. because of Trump’s bigotry. As Alito writes, Trump’s DHS “ended TPS designations for every country that came under review.” And those countries include the nations of “East Asia (Nepal and Burma), Central Asia (Afghanistan), the Middle East (Syria and Yemen), Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Cameroon), Central America (Nicaragua and Honduras), South America (Venezuela), and the Caribbean (Haiti).”
So, despite Trump’s offensive statements, it appears that his administration did not specifically discriminate against Haitians, or against Black people more broadly. Trump’s policy seems to be that all people who previously enjoyed TPS will be treated equally cruelly.
