The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for immigrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.
The court voted 6-3 on ideological lines.
More than 19,000 Haitians in Massachusetts have temporary protected status, according to FWD.US — and local Haitians had hoped for a favorable decision from the court. Several people have spoken with GBH News about their fears of detention, losing their livelihoods, homes, and deportation to a country where their children won’t have an education.
Massachusetts resident and TPS holder Marie Fleurival was making breakfast when GBH News called her on Thursday. She hadn’t yet heard the news.
Fleurival turned off the stove and went silent for several seconds. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “What are we gonna do?”
Fleurival is a home care aide who was previously laid off by her employer due to confusion over the ongoing changes to TPS, and then rehired after a GBH News story. She owns her own home, has a son in middle school and is pursuing a nursing degree while she works.
“This is a disaster for the Haitian people. We work hard, we contribute to the economy,” she said. “We must stand firm, we must stick firm together. God can make a miracle.”
The 19,000 Haitians with temporary protected status in Massachusetts each have their own unique legal situations to navigate, but some will be vulnerable to detention and deportation. TPS holders are able to apply for other statuses, like asylum. But legal experts are trying to navigate what they describe as a Catch-22: Many of those processes are currently frozen for immigrants from particular countries — including Haiti. It is not immediately clear how quickly the terminations will go into effect for Haitians and Syrians.
Massachusetts has the nation’s third-largest Haitian population behind Florida and New York, according to World Population Review’s data. It is unclear how many Syrian TPS holders there are in Massachusetts, but there are at least 6,000 nationwide.
“We made a clear case that this administration did not follow any protocol before deciding to end TPS for Haiti,” said Geralde Gabeau, executive director of Immigrant Family Services Institute. “The devastating impact of terminating TPS, not only on the families, but on our entire society — it is a sad day.”
Her nonprofit has served thousands of Haitians in Massachusetts with varying immigration statuses, assisting with workforce development, language access and humanitarian help.
“We are blended in America. The most horrific situation occurs when Haiti is continuing to experience unprecedented violence, political instability, humanitarian crisis, and massive internal displacement — I could not comprehend it and could not wrap my mind around this,” said the Rev. Dieufort Fleurissaint, leader of True Alliance Center, which helps Haitian immigrants with housing, health and legal services. “America, the God’s country, to act so inhumanly toward the Haitian people.”
Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition, called the decision “inhumane, immoral, and abhorrent.”
“Forcing individuals to return to an extremely dangerous and violent situation, one which they have already fled, will rip families and communities apart,” she said in a statement. “Haitian TPS holders are critical to the makeup of our state and country, and this decision will be catastrophic for our state’s workforce and economy.”
The decision overturns lower court orders.
Supreme Court justices said the federal law creating the TPS program bars courts from reviewing the determinations by to end the TPS designations for those countries — a ruling that could prevent further challenges to the program’s end.
The Supreme Court’s liberal bloc — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. Kagan wrote temporary protected status recipients “ask for only one thing: that they may stay in this country while they continue to litigate their claims. ... They are entitled to that relief, and should not instead be consigned to devastating, and indeed life-threatening, injury.”
Immigration attorneys argued Haiti and Syria remain unsafe to return, and the administration ended the temporary protected status programs in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. The State Department itself maintains a Level 4 do not travel advisory to Haiti.
The Trump administration has denied that racial animus played a role and argued judges can’t second-guess immigration officials’ decisions about the protections, which were intended to be temporary. The Supreme Court previously sided with the Trump administration, allowing the end of the program for people from Venezuela.
“Who do they open the door to and who do they close the door to? This is not rocket science. This is evident by all of the decisions that this administration has been taking against Black immigrants, especially against Haiti,” said Gabeau. “We heard all of the very derogative words that this administration, this leader, has used against Haiti. I don’t understand how the Supreme Court could really make such a determination.”
Fears of deportation are palpable, especially when there have already been repercussions for Haitians deported from the United States. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.
History of temporary protected status
There are about 45,000 temporary protected status recipients in Massachusetts, the largest group of which are Haitians, at over 19,000. Some arrived right after the first designation occurred in 2010, after a catastrophic earthquake. Still others came throughout the years as the designation was extended by multiple administrations, especially after gang violence grew even more after the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, and the seizure of Port-au-Prince by gangs.
Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012 during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.
Temporary protected status was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it doesn’t provide a path to citizenship.
A New York judge blocked the Trump administration’s effort to end TPS last year. In response, the government issued a Federal Register notice saying the protections would expire in February 2026, and that the country no longer met the conditions to continue it.
In Washington D.C., District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes ruled in favor of Haitians, temporarily allowing TPS holders to stay pending further judicial review. She also ruled that the TPS holders could continue to work even if their work authorizations mentioned a February termination date, and would be protected from detention and deportation. A circuit court upheld that.
The Department of Homeland Security told GBH News last month that TPS for Haitians was granted after the earthquake 15 years ago and it “was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades.” For Syria, the department said conditions “no longer prevent their nationals from returning home.”
Federal efforts to curtail, and expand, temporary protected status
DHS has ended the protections people from 13 countries since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, including some that had been in place for more than a decade.
The program allows 1.3 million people from 17 countries to live and work legally in the United States without fear of deportation, as long as they commit no crimes and submit renewal paperwork and requirements. They undergo renewal every two years, pay fees, and are subject to background checks.
“Importantly, the loss of TPS does not necessarily mean the loss of all legal protections,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement. “Some individuals may have other immigration statuses or options available. I strongly encourage impacted individuals to seek qualified legal guidance to understand their rights. “
She said her office is reviewing the implications of the decision on families, employers, health care systems and communities across the commonwealth.
Gov. Maura Healey said her administration is similarly reviewing the impact of the decision.
“These are people who are raising families, paying taxes, caring for our loved ones, opening businesses and filling critical jobs,” Healey said in a statement. “Haitian and Syrian immigrants are our neighbors, coworkers, caregivers, health care workers, business owners and friends. They have become part of the fabric of our communities and a foundation of our economy.”
Massachusetts’ congressional delegation was also outraged at the outcome.
“The far-right extremist majority on the Court has severed a critical lifeline for people seeking safety and has worsened a humanitarian crisis,” said Sen. Ed Markey in a press conference in front of the Supreme Court. “We have a moral duty to protect TPS holders and to provide this vulnerable group a permanent pathway to citizenship. We must continue the fight to protect our neighbors.”
In April, he led senators and representatives in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court for the case with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
Pressley called the Trump administration “cruel and callous” in a press conference following the ruling.
Addressing temporary protected status holders, she said: “America is still your home, and this fight is not over.”
“The implications of this ruling are nothing short of catastrophic,” the Massachusetts Congresswoman added. “Seniors will lose their caregivers when we already have a caregiving crisis, and seniors will lose their ability to age in community with much needed assistance. And the children, the children will lose their classmates, who will be forced to leave this country. And America will lose out on the talent, skills, and culture that immigrants contribute every single day.”
In April, the House passed Pressley’s effort to extend temporary protected status for Haiti by a vote of 224-204, with the help of a bipartisan discharge petition.
“This fight is not over, and the Senate should take this bill up—our discharge petition that passed the House on April 16th—should take this up immediately and save lives,” Pressley said.
No similar legislation has passed in the Senate this session. Markey has previously introduced legislation to extend Haiti’s TPS designation, and he supports legislation to give TPS holders a pathway to legal residency.
