Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can cancel Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants, many of whom have lived in the United States for decades. Even more alarming, the court ruled the secretary of Homeland Security can effectively rescind TPS for anyone in the United States without judicial review. The court’s majority brushed off any notion that the administration acted with racial animus, while Justice Elena Kagan disagreed in a blistering dissent.
This decision puts the lives of some 1.3 million people currently living in the U.S. with TPS, as well as the program itself, at serious risk. Temporary Protected Status was established three decades ago to provide protection from deportation and work authorization for people from countries where it is considered unsafe to return.
The court’s ruling realizes some of the worst fears of immigration advocates who have worked to protect immigrants from being targeted by the deportation regime. As Immigration Research Initiative has covered in several reports since 2025, the immigration project outlined by the Trump administration is not simply about deporting undocumented immigrants, it also aims to strip millions of their legal status and put them in the crosshairs of the deportation machine. More than 800,000 immigrants with TPS are in the U.S. labor force, working to support their families and in the process bolstering local economies. There are also 390,000 U.S. citizen children who live with TPS holders, as well as 410,000 adults who are U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court has effectively given the Trump Administration carte blanche to rip these families apart even after they have lived and worked in this country legally for years.
For more information about the Supreme Court ruling and TPS holders in the U.S., visit these resources:
An excellent report from NPR about the impacts of the court’s decision
A FWD.us infographic with data on Haitian TPS holders for some states
A Center for Migration Studies map that shows the total number of TPS holders by state by clicking on “liminal” at the top left and scrolling down to show TPS, DACA, Humanitarian Parole, and other categories.
Note: There are some small discrepancies between different news sources regarding the number of Haitian TPS holders in the United States. The Congressional Research Service reported that there were 330,000 approved TPS holders from Haiti in March 2025, but some estimates place the number at 350,000 after accounting for new approvals between March 2025 and the end of 2025 when the Trump Administration terminated the program.