The Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration in two major immigration cases

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, two major immigration rulings at the Supreme Court. Curbing immigration was a key promise President Trump made ahead of his second term. And today, the Supreme Court handed the administration two major victories. The first had to do with asylum. The justices cleared the way to block asylum seekers from entering the United States before they can apply for protection. Prior to today's ruling, a migrant who came to the U.S.-Mexico border and spoke to a border agent was thought of as an arrival, even if they didn't step foot on U.S.

0:34soil. That meant they could apply for asylum and enter the U.S. as they awaited a hearing. But not anymore. And in a separate ruling, the justices addressed a program intended to offer humanitarian protection to some immigrants. The court allowed the Trump administration to begin ending temporary protected status, or TPS, for thousands of migrants who have been living and working legally in the U.S. The ruling applies to migrants who fled Syria and Haiti, clearing the way for mass deportations. My people, they can't go back. It's real. The reality in Haiti is real. Currently, there are more than 330 ,000 immigrants who are directly affected by today's TPS ruling.

1:18And it could affect hundreds of thousands more. Consider this. The Supreme Court has struck a blow to long-standing immigration protections. What do the rulings mean, and how will they shape immigration policy in the future? From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

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2:42It's Consider This from NPR. The U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions giving President Trump more power to pursue his immigration agenda. To better understand the implications of these rulings, I spoke with NPR's immigration policy correspondent Jimena Bustio. Jimena, let's start with TPS or temporary protected status. What are the implications of that ruling? In a six to three decision, the conservative majority ruled that the president has virtually unrestrained power to end temporary protected status, often called TPS. This was a case specifically about TPS recipients from Haiti and Syria, which total over 300 ,000 people.

3:19But it has broader implications. TPS provides deportation protection and grants work permits. And it's given to people from specific countries affected by war, natural disasters, political instability, or any other condition that makes the country unsafe to return to. Each country's designation can last 6 to 18 months, and that's at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Now the court is agreeing with the government that making those designations is up to the secretary and not subject to legal review. Okay, so what happens to the people who are on the program? Well, they need to either adjust their status, which there are very limited ways of doing so, or they need to leave the country.

3:58And if they don't do either, they do risk falling out of status, and that could lead to an arrest, detention, and ultimate deportation. Many face job loss as well, as companies will not be able to continue legally employing thousands of workers. Ira Kersben is the attorney representing Haitian TPS holders. Their families are American citizens. They have American citizen children. So we're talking in a practical manner respect to all the GPS people. You're talking about millions of people in the United States who contribute to the economy. He argues Haiti, Syria and other countries are just not stable enough for people to return.

4:36And many of these people have also been here for decades. Now to the second immigration decision from the court today, and that one's related to asylum. What can you tell us? In another 6-3 decision, the court backed a policy that allows custom and border protection agents to turn away asylum seekers before they cross the U.S. border. The order says asylum seekers need to fully cross the U.S. border with Mexico to claim asylum. So essentially, migrants who are turned back by officials under this policy technically never left the physical Mexican side of the border. So the administration argues they are ineligible to apply for that legal protection to be in the U.S.

5:11The ruling effectively further limits who can get permission to even stay in the country. Ximena, take stock for us. What do these rulings mean for the administration's broader immigration priorities? Well, both of these rulings reduce legal pathways to enter the country. The administration has a broader goal of mass deportations. And in order to reach that goal, the administration has increased the number of people who are eligible for deportation, even if they are legally here. The ruling on TPS allows the administration to strip existing protections from deportations and permissions to legally work here.

5:45The administration has also terminated TPS for nearly every country that had it at the start of President Trump's term. The asylum ruling also limits how migrants can ask for permission to stay. This administration is very focused on immigration enforcement in the interior of the country, while also keeping border crossings as minimal as possible. And these rulings allow the government to further change the immigration system. NPR's Jimena Bustillo, thanks. Thank you. As we just heard, the Supreme Court ruled in a major case involving the Temporary Protected Status Program, also known as TPS. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg gives us a closer look at the court's decision.

6:25By a vote of 6-3, the court's conservative supermajority ruled that the president has virtually unchecked power to end the temporary protected status program known as TPS. Congress enacted the law in 1990 to allow fully vetted and eligible migrants living in the U.S. to remain and work here legally if they cannot return safely to their home countries because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, and other extraordinary conditions. Since the law's enactment, every president, Republican or Democrat, has embraced it. But Trump has systematically tried to end the program. And today, the Supreme Court gave him the tools to do it in two cases.

7:09One involved some 350 ,000 Haitians who were granted TPS status in 2010 after a devastating earthquake, and roughly 7 ,000 Syrians granted TPS status during that country's civil war. Writing for the court's conservatives, Justice Samuel Alito said that the TPS statute bars any court review of how the president and his Department of Homeland Security have used their authority to end TPS status. At the same time, he also rejected the Haitians' separate constitutional claim that the decision to eject them from the country was based on racial prejudice. Quote, political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago, he said.

8:00But whatever one may think of those statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti's TPS designations was based on the race of the Haitian people. Writing for the liberal dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan lambasted that claim, saying, quote, Quote, the evidence is there, plain to see in the president's own statements, which even his own lawyers cannot bear to repeat in court. Statements which she quoted at length in which Trump referred to Haiti as a filthy, dirty, disgusting, asshole country. Trump's debunked claims that Haitians living in the U.S. were eating their neighbor's pets.

8:40and his assertions that Haitians are poisoning the blood of the country, in addition to his repeated comments asking, quote, why can't we have more people from Norway and Sweden? Jay Johnson, who served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, reacted to the court's decision this way. The majority seems to be willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt here. Well, they're not overtly racist. It comes about as close as you can to being overtly racist. Ohio State law professor Cesar Garcia Hernandez had a more pointed reaction. What is racial if not describing the poisoning of our blood and similar comments that the president has made?

9:25And University of Chicago law professor Aziz Hook. So it's very hard to come away from this opinion with a sense that there is ever going to be a situation in which the court, even when it has record evidence in front of it, finds that there is racial discrimination against a racial minority. That said, in practical terms, there are big consequences, not just for the Haitian community, according to Krish Omeera Bignaraja, president and CEO of Global Refuge, the largest faith-based immigration nonprofit in the U.S. This decision affects 350 ,000 Haitians, and a third of those Haitians work in our health care sector.

10:07They are caregivers. They are doctors. And I think part of the bipartisan support was a recognition of the local impact it would have on Americans, who are obviously desperately seeking care for themselves, for their kids, and for their parents. That bipartisan support was recently demonstrated when the House of Representatives passed a bill to extend TPS status for Haitians. But even if it were to pass the Senate, President Trump would almost certainly veto the bill. In a second immigration decision today, also written by Justice Alito, the court's conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in making it much harder for those seeking asylum in the U.S.

10:50Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

11:20This week on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we asked comedy legend Robert Smigel about the moment he first knew he was funny. When I was like four or five, I could draw really well. So I could draw Fred Flintstone and Snoopy. And then probably a couple of years later, I started drawing them having sex. Listen to the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Your favorite toys are back in Toy Story 5, and they're facing some new competition. the dreaded tablet how will buzz and woody handle kids glued to screens and how does this new movie compare to others in the franchise we get into it on npr's pop culture happy hour listen via the npr app or wherever you get your podcasts