Supreme Court hears arguments over deportation protections for Syrians, Haitians

Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is weighing the Trump administration's efforts to rescind temporary deportation protections for more than 6,000 Syrian and 350,000 Haitian immigrants. President Trump and his administration have moved to end the relief, known as Temporary Protected Status, for 1 million immigrants from 13 countries since the start of the president's second term. The push to revoke TPS is just one aspect of Mr. Trump's immigration agenda, a pillar of which is mass deportations. The cases before the court, known as Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, stem from then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem's decisions to end TPS for thousands of Syrians and Haitians. In both cases, Noem determined that after consulting with other agencies and reviewing conditions in the two countries, they no longer met the criteria for TPS. Syria's designation was set to end last November and Haiti's in February. Immigrants from the two countries had roughly 60 days from Noem's announcement to when their deportation protections would expire. But TPS holders from Syria and Haiti filed two lawsuits challenging the administration's terminations as unlawful, and judges in New York and Washington, D.C., agreed to postpone the effective dates. After appeals courts declined to put the lower court decisions on hold, the Trump administration sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court. …