--- title: "Temporary Protected Status May Be Ending. Here's What the Supreme Court Did." description: "A Supreme Court ruling last week stripped federal courts of much of their power to block the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status, a decision advocates say signals the effective unwinding of a 35-year humanitarian program that has shielded more than a million immigrants — many of them in Southern California — from deportation." category: "U.S." category_url: https://herald.la/category/us author: "Desmond Clarke" published: 2026-06-29T21:48:00.000Z updated: 2026-06-29T21:48:00.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/temporary-protected-status-may-be-ending-here-s-what-the-supreme-court-did tags: ["immigration", "Supreme Court", "TPS", "Haiti", "Venezuela", "Los Angeles", "deportation"] --- # Temporary Protected Status May Be Ending. Here's What the Supreme Court Did. A Supreme Court ruling last week stripped federal courts of much of their power to block the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status, a decision advocates say signals the effective unwinding of a 35-year humanitarian program that has shielded more than a million immigrants — many of them in Southern California — from deportation. A humanitarian program that has let people from crisis-stricken countries live and work legally in the United States for decades may be nearing its end. ## What Temporary Protected Status is Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 as a humanitarian relief valve. The law lets the Secretary of Homeland Security designate countries hit by war, disaster or other extraordinary crises, and shield their nationals already in the U.S. from deportation while conditions at home remain dangerous. Recipients get work permits and renewable status — but no path to permanent residency. As of early 2025, [about 1.3 million people from 17 countries](https://www.kff.org/immigrant-health/recent-changes-to-temporary-protected-status-designations-potential-impacts-on-health-and-health-care/) held TPS, the Kaiser Family Foundation found, with Venezuelans, Haitians, Salvadorans, Ukrainians and Hondurans making up roughly 97 percent of the total. ## What the Court did On June 25, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that federal law [generally bars courts from reviewing](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-to-end-removal-protections-for-syrian-and-haitian-nati/) a Homeland Security Secretary's decision to terminate a TPS designation. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito vacated lower-court injunctions that had blocked the administration from ending TPS for Haiti and Syria, and rejected the claim that the terminations were driven by racial animus, finding the cited statements "could rest on race-neutral justifications." Three justices dissented. The decision capped more than a year of litigation in which federal judges — including one in California — had repeatedly halted the administration's moves before the high court sided with the executive branch. ## Who is affected, and what comes next The June 25 ruling directly affects roughly [330,000 Haitians and several thousand Syrians](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/29/g-s1-130942/temporary-protected-status-program-explainer-supreme-court), NPR reported. But the administration's broader termination campaign reaches much further: protections for more than 350,000 Venezuelans ended in October 2025, Honduras's designation lapsed in September, and Afghanistan, Cameroon and Nepal have also lost theirs. The National TPS Alliance estimates the terminations affect some 900,000 people in all. The consequences are immediate. Without TPS, work authorization disappears, recipients revert to unlawful status and become exposed to deportation, and many lose access to health coverage. Legal alternatives are narrow: people who entered without authorization often face a 10-year bar before they could seek a green card, and asylum is generally limited to the first year after arrival. "Most people who have TPS and who have been on TPS for a long time simply don't have any path to permanent legal status," Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute told NPR. ## The stakes for Southern California Los Angeles is home to some of the nation's largest Central American communities, with Salvadorans and Hondurans rooted in neighborhoods like Pico-Union, Koreatown and Boyle Heights. El Salvador's designation — the oldest active one, in place 26 years and covering roughly 170,000 people nationally — is set to expire in September 2026. Local groups including CARECEN-LA have joined national organizing and legal efforts, and the ACLU of Southern California was among those that argued against the terminations in the Ninth Circuit. ## A contested policy The administration frames its actions as restoring TPS to its temporary intent. Officials have argued that long-term holders "have had plenty of time" to seek permanent status and that the government will help people return home; former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who carried out much of the rollback, said she was returning the program "to its original temporary intent." Advocates reject that framing. Todd Schulte of the immigration-reform group FWD.us said there is "no precedent in modern immigration history for revoking status for a population like that" — people who have raised U.S.-born children and paid taxes for decades. Haiti, meanwhile, has been under a state of emergency since 2024 amid gang violence and hunger. With the courts largely sidelined, Gelatt offered a stark forecast: the country could end the year "without anybody who has temporary protected status." ## Sources - [Supreme Court marks likely end of Temporary Protected Status](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/29/g-s1-130942/temporary-protected-status-program-explainer-supreme-court) - [Court allows Trump administration to end removal protections for Syrian and Haitian nationals](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-allows-trump-administration-to-end-removal-protections-for-syrian-and-haitian-nati/) - [Recent changes to Temporary Protected Status designations](https://www.kff.org/immigrant-health/recent-changes-to-temporary-protected-status-designations-potential-impacts-on-health-and-health-care/)