Supreme Court makes it easier to deport immigrants

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

**Kate Shaw** (0:07)
These are big wins for the Trump administration, either directly or their favorite outcomes, but also they make it difficult to access courts to get relief.

**Ashley Lock** (0:18)
The Supreme Court advances Trump's agenda on immigration, gun rights, and the environment.
It's Thursday, June 25th, and this is Here and Now Anytime. From NPR and WBUR, Boston, I'm Ashley Lock. Today on the show, a legal expert walks us through what we know about today's Supreme Court rulings. And the US is promising help for Venezuela after two major earthquakes.

**Yesmin Utrera** (0:56)
I have two daughters, one is four, the other is 10 And they were absolutely terrified.

**Ashley Lock** (1:04)
But first, a whopping four decisions came out of the Supreme Court today. And they're big ones. The court says the Trump administration can start mass deportations of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The court also sided with the administration on a separate immigration case limiting asylum seekers at the border. We have an important decision overturning a gun law in Hawaii and a big break for the manufacturer of the weed killer Roundup.
Kate Shaw is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She joins Peter O'Dowd for analysis.

**Peter O'Dowd** (1:36)
So let's start with that TPS decision. Haitians were granted temporary protected status after a devastating earthquake in 2010 Syrians got it in 2012 because of a civil war. So these are people who've been living and working in the United States legally for many years. What did the court say today?

**Kate Shaw** (1:53)
Right. So these are both both of these groups are recipients of this TPS status, which is this humanitarian relief for individuals who are already in the United States. And the government determines they cannot be safely returned to their home countries because of things like armed conflict or natural disaster. So as you just said, both Haiti and Syria were under these designations. The Trump administration tried to end both as it has for most TPS designations.
And lower courts found both at the right steps were not followed in making those terminations. But also in the case of Haiti, that unconstitutional racial bias or animus infected that decision. And on both counts, the court ruled in favor of the administration against the challengers and allowed that TPS cancellation to move forward. As you said, throwing into question at least the status of hundreds of thousands of individuals who've been living and working in this country in many cases for years.

**Peter O'Dowd** (2:41)
I think it's worth noting the state department, the government, currently has a do not travel advisory for Haiti. And so there is some concern that Haitians will be forced back into a dangerous situation. Kate, what is the impact of this on people from a dozen or so other countries that have TPS?

**Kate Shaw** (3:01)
Right. Well, the opinion basically says that courts have no role to play in second guessing the executive branch's determination. So whatever steps were followed or weren't followed, you mentioned the state department. So this was a DHS secretarial determination. There's supposed to be consultation with other government agencies, historically very centrally with the state department. And there was real back and forth in this.

**Peter O'Dowd** (3:23)
All right, Kate, we dropped your line for just a moment. So we missed some of what you just said, but I do want to move on to the new gun law in Hawaii, which the court now says is unconstitutional. It required people to get permission before bringing guns onto private property that's open to the public, something like a restaurant. Why is this case important?

**Kate Shaw** (3:42)
Well, this is yet another case in which the court reads very broadly the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and invalidates, in this case, the state law, but it's done the same with federal laws that limit gun rights and gun carrying rights in particular in this case. So Hawaii basically said, right, the Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment gives people the right to keep and bear arms. States have to expansively license people who want to carry guns. But we're going to basically require some affirmative step. If private property owners don't take some step to say, you're allowed to carry your gun onto my property, the default will be that you can't carry on private property that's open to the public.
And the Supreme Court basically says that's a law that is insufficiently respectful of what the Second Amendment protects, the right of Americans to carry arms as they go about their daily lives. So yet another very pro-gun rights ruling from the Supreme Court.