Supreme Court Delivers Big Wins for Trump’s Immigration Agenda

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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:35)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.
In two polarized 6-3 decisions on Thursday, the Supreme Court delivered big wins for President Trump's immigration agenda, closing off yet another path to seek legal status in the US and potentially setting the stage for hundreds of thousands of people to be deported. Today, my colleague Hamed Aleaziz, on how those rulings have given Trump new tools to reshape immigration in America. It's Friday, June 26th. Hamed, welcome back to The Daily.

**Hamed Aleaziz** (1:31)
Thank you for having me.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:32)
We're going to talk about the specifics of these two new decisions from the Supreme Court. One of them addresses temporary protected status, TPS for immigrants, and the other involves claims of asylum. But before we do that, can you just start by putting these rulings into context for me? How important are they to the Trump administration's immigration agenda?

**Hamed Aleaziz** (1:53)
Yeah, they're very important. These are major victories for the Trump administration, in particular when it comes to this ruling on TPS. I mean, this is something that has been a priority of the Trump administration, of Stephen Miller, to unwind these protections for nearly a decade now.
Every time they try to cut back these rulings affecting hundreds of thousands of people, they were stymied by the federal courts. So today really is a culmination of that effort in which the Supreme Court is essentially saying that this is the decision of the president and the Department of Homeland Security.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:34)
Okay, so if we're going to look at these rulings one by one, it sounds like we should start with the TPS order. So first, just remind us what TPS is, actually, what this case centers on.

**Hamed Aleaziz** (2:48)
Yeah, temporary protected status really is as the phrase is defined.
This is a program that allows immigrants, regardless of their status, regardless of whether or not they have a deportation order, the ability to be protected from deportation and have work authorization because their home country is too dangerous to deport them to.
Historically, that's because of conflict, wars, or natural disasters. In those instances, the DHS secretary has just decided that this group of people will be protected from deportation.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:26)
Okay. And what was the challenge that the court was considering here?

**Hamed Aleaziz** (3:32)
So what happened here was really when you look back to the first Trump administration, there's been a focus amongst Trump officials to go after this program. Specifically, the concern has been that this temporary protected status program is no longer temporary, that people are on TPS for years, for decades, and it's essentially turning into, in their words, an amnesty.
So you saw the first Trump administration attempt to unwind TPS for groups, including Haitians, and they were stymied by court challenges.
Biden comes in, Biden totally explodes the TPS program, really expands the pools of population who could get TPS. It's really an unprecedented level of people. And so this administration, the Trump administration part two, comes in really with a focus on TPS, including it's in some of the first day executive orders. And so DHS secretary at the time, former DHS secretary Noem, unwinds TPS protections for Venezuelans, for Haitians, for most of the populations that have TPS. And so in this case, you have Haitians and Syrians who she unwinded the protections for last year. And the advocates representing these populations essentially are saying she didn't follow the right process and are pointing out all these deficiencies with the process with which she undid the protections.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (5:10)
Got it. So advocates representing those groups of migrants sue the administration saying they didn't go about the unwinding correctly. And that case ultimately makes it to the Supreme Court.

**Hamed Aleaziz** (5:22)
Yeah, exactly.
And the Supreme Court in its ruling said that the decision to unwind TPS is not reviewable by the judicial branch. That judges do not have the ability to come in and stop a DHS decision unwinding TPS. In fact, this is in the power of the DHS secretary. It's in the statute. It is not reviewable by the courts.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (5:54)
Meaning, essentially, the court is saying there is no role for us here in stopping the executive branch from winding this program down. That's just not our job. It's not in the law. We can't do that.