The immigration battle between the Trump administration and activist judges will once again be brought before the nation’s highest court today (April 29). The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe, consolidated cases challenging the administration's efforts to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, respectively. Plaintiffs in both actions have secured stays in the lower courts against the government's nonrenewal of TPS status. The Trump administration is asking SCOTUS to lift the stay, so that deportations of Haitians and Syrians in the United States under the program can be returned to their native lands.
TDS vs TPS
Attention to the Miot case intensified with the recent alleged murder by hammer of a mother of two by a Haitian immigrant in Florida. The suspected offender, Rolbert Joachin, originally entered the country illegally but was then granted TPS by the Biden administration, which subsequently expired in 2024. Other high-profile criminal offenses have been alleged in recent years against Haitian immigrants in Massachusetts, including Cory Alvarez, charged with the aggravated rape of a 15-year-old girl; Akim Marc Desire, accused of indecent assault and battery on a child under age 14; Wisteguens Jean Quely Charles, an alleged member of a violent Haitian street gang, who had 17 prior criminal convictions, including for drugs, weapons (firearms and brass knuckles), and assault and battery; and Gasnoy Saintilme, arrested on multiple charges, including drug trafficking and illegal firearms possession.
Despite these alleged egregious offenses and potential threats to public safety purported by the Trump administration, judges appear to have been contorting clear laws to thwart efforts to deport Haitian and other immigrants who availed themselves of the TPS program, replacing agency determinations with their own. Repeatedly, these courts have ruled that the loss of jobs, housing, and family connections by TPS immigrants justifies staying their deportations pending legal challenges, essentially using judicial fiat to reverse the clear rule of law and regulatory authority governing immigration programs.
The government counters that these courts have invoked outrageous claims of racist animus by President Donald Trump as a motivating factor in ending TPS protections and second-guessed Department of Homeland Security decision-making, putting American citizens and national security in jeopardy in the process. Prior Supreme Court decisions in similar legal disputes have resulted in the overruling of these sketchy stays, and a similar outcome is anticipated in the Miot and Doe disputes.
Haitian Immigration History
Congress created the TPS scheme to permit the temporary immigration of individuals affected by war, violence, or natural disasters. Haitian immigration under TPS expanded dramatically following the devastating earthquake there in 2010, increasing even more during the Biden administration. It is now estimated that some 350,000 Haitians currently reside in the United States under the program, adding to a swollen roster of other immigrants admitted into America under in what was supposed to be a safe-haven program that morphed into a long-term, large-scale pipeline of even more immigrants, often insufficiently vetted for criminal proclivities.
The Haitian earthquake is long over, prompting former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to issue a timely determination that the relevant TPS designation should be terminated. (Syria’s TPS designation is also longstanding, having been granted in 2012.) Lower courts found that there were potential harms to the plaintiffs from being sent home, including loss of jobs, leases, and family connections. Yet the government asserts that, by statute, courts lack jurisdiction to oversee DHS determinations of TPS designation, and all harms alleged were inherent in the temporary nature of the TPS program created by Congress. That is, by definition, immigrants would suffer harm by the termination of the TPS designation, but this does not grant standing to sue under a statute that was already magnanimous.
In its application for a stay in the Miot case, the government essentially argues that the lower courts reversed the standard required by the enabling TPS statutes, placing immigrants’ inconveniences above urgent government responsibilities, stating:
“The majority viewed respondents’ harms, ‘including risk of detention and deportation, separation from family members, and loss of work authorization,’ as outweighing any harm to the government in maintaining the status quo … a view that would preclude the government from showing irreparable harm any time it alters existing policy.”
The Trump administration also points rather persuasively to the specific language of the TPS statutory framework, which provides in 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(5)(A) that there will be “no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination of a designation” of a foreign state for TPS. But the judges in question concocted a bizarre end-run around that plain language. As explained by the application for stay: “The court then portrayed Section 1254a(b)(5)(A) as ‘[n]arrow’ and limited to challenges to ‘the Secretary’s determination’ — not challenges to ‘how the Secretary went about making her determination.’”
A Long-Fought Legal Dispute
The roots of this judicial insurrection did not arise under an Obama or Biden administration, but Donald Trump’s first term. This upending of legal precedent and tradition began in the 2018 case of Ramos v. Nielsen, in which a district court enjoined the DHS termination of the TPS designation for Haitians because the “‘extraordinary and temporary conditions’ relating to the 2010 earthquake that prevented Haitian nationals from returning in safety” were “no longer met.”
The first Trump administration fought this decision, but the case dragged along in court until the 2020 advent of the Biden administration, rendering the case moot – the appeal of Ramos was never heard. Yet the current justifications for the obstruction of DHS TPS determinations repeat almost verbatim what the court in Ramos v. Nielsen ruled in 2018. The Ramos court found that the plaintiffs had established that DHS had “changed the criteria applied by the prior administrations,” that this “may have been done in order to implement and justify a pre-ordained result desired by the White House,” and that the underlying motives were racist.
The Ramos court held:
“Plaintiffs have also raised serious questions whether the actions taken by the Acting Secretary or Secretary [were] influenced by the White House and based on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants in violation of Equal Protection guaranteed by the Constitution. The issues are at least serious enough to preserve the status quo.
The government countered then – and again now – that the “status quo” includes the continued presence of insufficiently vetted foreign immigrants on American soil, an ongoing public safety risk to US citizens that also undermines national security. The courts have argued that granting stays against government deportation would not inflict irreparable harm, yet the Trump administration (and regular news headlines) vociferously counter that claim.
Polls show a majority of Americans support the deportation of violent criminals and also suggest even legal immigration is suffering as Americans reassess past views in light of the open borders and daily crime reports they have engendered. It may be that judicial cartwheels such as Ramos and its recent progeny have fostered will sow similar distrust of federal courts and the government's capacity to simply enforce clear laws.
The Supreme Court is likely to agree with DHS and the Trump administration in these cases, not because of some nebulous “conservative bias” but because this Court applies the law. If immigration advocates wish to change statutes they don’t like, they must do so through Congress, not partisan judicial hijinks.
