The Justice Department on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the administration's plan to end deportation protections for roughly 6,000 Syrians residing in the United States. In an emergency filing, the department asked the high court to lift a November ruling by a federal judge that barred the administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Syrians while litigation over the decision continues.
This petition represents the administration's third trip to the Supreme Court in connection with efforts to revoke TPS designations. The high court previously sided with the administration in two earlier matters concerning revocations of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
Under U.S. law, TPS is a humanitarian designation intended for migrants from countries affected by armed conflict, natural disasters or other catastrophic circumstances. The designation shields those granted TPS from deportation and authorizes them to work in the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security, under this administration, has moved to end TPS for nationals of 12 countries, among them Syria. Multiple legal challenges have produced court orders that are currently preventing the government from terminating TPS for people from a number of nations, including Ethiopia, South Sudan, Haiti, Syria and Myanmar.
TPS was first extended to Syrian nationals in 2012 during former President Barack Obama’s administration, a designation made after Syria descended into a civil war that the filing says culminated with the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, an appointee of the Republican president, announced in September that she would end Syria's TPS designation, stating that the situation in Syria "no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals."
In November, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan issued an order blocking the administration from terminating TPS for Syrian nationals. On February 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York declined to stay that injunction.
In its Supreme Court filing, the Justice Department said that lower courts are disregarding the high court's prior orders in cases related to Venezuela's TPS designation. The department urged the Supreme Court to take up and hear the dispute directly, citing what it characterized as the "lower courts' persistent disregard" for the Supreme Court's actions in the earlier proceedings.
The administration has argued that the TPS program has been overused and that many migrants no longer qualify for protection. Opponents of the policy change - including Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocacy groups - contend that ending TPS could force enrollees to return to conditions they describe as dangerous and that U.S. employers rely on the labor provided by TPS recipients.
The Supreme Court asked the group of Syrians who are challenging the administration's move to file a response to the emergency request by March 5.
Context and judicial posture
The emergency petition asks the Supreme Court to set aside a district court injunction that has preserved TPS protections for Syrians while litigation plays out. The filing frames the question as part of a broader set of disputes the administration has already taken to the high court regarding termination of TPS for other countries.
Legal and policy stakes
At issue are competing judicial determinations about the reach of agency decisionmaking on humanitarian immigration designations and the extent to which lower courts must follow the Supreme Court's handling of earlier, related matters. The dispute involves statutory designations, administrative findings about country conditions, and the role of the judiciary in reviewing those decisions.