The US Supreme Court gives two big victories to Trump on immigration matters
The agency allows the government to further restrict passage at the border and end temporary protection status for Haitians and Syrians
WashingtonThe Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday granted two major victories to the Trump administration in immigration cases. On the one hand, it ruled that the government can end the temporary protection status currently enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians. On the other, it decided it can physically prevent immigrants from crossing the border, even if they are asylum seekers.
The Trump administration had asked the Court to allow it to reinstate a policy it had already applied in 2016: hot returns, which eliminate migrants' right to seek asylum, a right they had obtained thanks to federal laws. Until now, immigrants who expressed to border officials their intention to request asylum or protection were referred to interviews where their petitions were evaluated.
The Supreme Court's decision on asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. border represents a major victory for Trump, after other judges had rejected the indefinite suspension of asylum applications or ruled that the Administration could not systematically deny asylum to people arriving from Mexico.
Once again, the six conservative judges voted in favor of the Administration, while the three progressive judges voted against it, highlighting the deep division within the Court, a division that was also reflected in the writings read by the magistrates from the bench.
Opens the door to the deportation of 1.3 million people
The Court's decision on the protection of Haitians and Syrians opens the door for the Department of Homeland Security to eliminate these protections not only for these groups, but also for a total of 1.3 million people from seventeen countries, who thanks to this regime can reside in the United States.
Lawyers for Haitian immigrants argued that this Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was created to protect them from having to return to countries that were not safe then, and that continue to be unsafe. They also argued that the Trump administration revoked these protections for racist reasons, the same ones that, they claimed, led the president to spread the rumor that Haitians ate the dogs and cats of their neighbors in Springfield, in the state of Ohio.
However, the Supreme Court considers that, in this case, it is not up to judges to revoke the decisions of an Administration, especially since these temporary residence permits were always conceived as temporary. In the case of Haiti, the United States granted this protection to its citizens after the devastating earthquake of 2010, and subsequently extended it several times due to gang violence, which has forced millions of people to displace.
Regarding Syrians, they obtained temporary protection for the first time in 2012, during the civil war that lasted more than ten years. Currently, about 350,000 Haitians and nearly 6,000 Syrians continue to be covered by these protections."In a few words, the Supreme Court's ruling will directly cause the violent and unnecessary death of thousands of innocent people," stated the Haitians' lawyers, Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber. "This sentence is a devastating betrayal to Haitian families who have lived, worked, and contributed to this country for years, only to end up being expelled due to anti-black immigrant sentiments," lamented the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, for its acronym in English).
