WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may revoke Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, a 6-to-3 decision that places more than 1.3 million TPS holders nationwide at imminent risk of arrest and deportation. Approximately 147,000 of those individuals live in Texas, one of the largest concentrations in the country.
Dallas, the third-largest city in Texas with approximately 1.3 million residents, is the economic heart of North Texas and home to the headquarters of AT&T, Southwest Airlines, and Texas Instruments.
Writing for the conservative majority in Mullin v. Doe, Associate Justice Samuel Alito held that TPS functions entirely at the discretion of the president and is not subject to judicial review. “Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide short-term humanitarian relief for aliens who cannot safely return to their home countries,” Alito wrote. “Although designed to afford temporary relief, TPS designations in practice have often lasted for decades.”
The ruling has dramatic implications for Texas, which hosts one of the nation’s largest populations of TPS holders. Seth Chandler, a constitutional law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said the decision streamlines the administration’s ability to revoke protections not just for Haitians and Syrians but also for Hondurans, Nepalis, Afghans, and potentially Venezuelans — the latter a community with deep ties to Houston.
“The Supreme Court is signaling that lower courts should not interfere with the executive’s authority, that when Congress grants a broad discretionary power to grant temporary status, the president should also have the same power to revoke the temporary status,” said Josh Blackman, professor of constitutional law at South Texas College of Law Houston. “I think this is a very important case of presidential power.”
