The Supreme Court's 6-3 rulings bar judicial review of DHS's power to end TPS, affecting 356,000 Haitian and Syrian nationals and reshaping immigration enforcement.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 25 that federal courts generally lack authority to review the Department of Homeland Security secretary's decisions to terminate Temporary Protected Status designations, clearing the path for the government to strip protections from approximately 356,000 Haitian and Syrian nationals [1]. Justice Samuel Alito wrote both majority opinions [1]. The decisions represent the most consequential judicial limitation on TPS enforcement authority since Congress created the program in 1990.
The rulings emerged from two companion cases decided the same day. In *Mullin v. Doe*, the Court addressed the reviewability of DHS's TPS termination decisions affecting Haitian nationals [2]. In the companion case, *Mullin v. Al Otro Lado*, the Court held that asylum seekers physically present in Mexico have not "arrived in" the United States and therefore cannot assert statutory asylum rights [1]. Both cases reached the Court after lower federal courts had blocked or constrained the administration's termination actions, creating a circuit-level conflict over the scope of judicial oversight of immigration enforcement discretion [2].
The TPS ruling's practical consequence is substantial. By foreclosing most judicial review of the DHS secretary's termination decisions, the Court insulates future executive action from the injunctions that had repeatedly delayed removals [3]. DHS issued a statement the same day characterizing the decisions as vindicating the secretary's statutory authority over TPS designations [3]. The asylum ruling carries independent force: it forecloses a significant class of border-adjacent claimants from accessing the formal asylum process while they remain in Mexico under third-country return arrangements, narrowing the legal ground on which advocacy organizations had challenged metering and remain-in-Mexico policies [1]. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in both cases [1].
The rulings remove what immigration practitioners had identified as the primary procedural check on large-scale TPS terminations. With judicial review curtailed and the companion asylum holding in place, DHS retains broad discretion to proceed with removal proceedings against affected Haitian and Syrian nationals without the intervention of preliminary injunctions that had stalled earlier enforcement efforts [2]. Litigation challenging individual removal orders on constitutional or procedural due-process grounds remains available, but the structural avenue, direct review of the termination decision itself, is effectively closed [2]. Advocates have signaled intent to explore remaining procedural avenues, though the Court's holdings leave limited runway for systemic challenge [1].