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Let's get into it:
The Trump administration got two big wins in the Supreme Court on Thursday, both of which precede a likely loss on the bid to end birthright citizenship. In Mullin v. Doe, the court ruled that the executive branch of the federal government is within its rights to terminate temporary protected status once the term of protection is up. They are not under any obligation to renew it ad infinitum. The ruling specifically referenced decisions that had been blocked by lower courts, which said that the Trump administration was not permitted to end TPS for Syrians and Haitians who had been in the United States due to turmoil in their own countries. It is unlikely that the ruling overturning Trump's ban on birthright citizenship will be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Syria has undergone substantial regime change following a civil war, making conditions for those who fled to the US to escape the Assad regime, beginning in 2012, far different from what they were when they left home. Haitians were granted TPS following a massive and devastating earthquake in 2010, 16 years ago. Conditions in both nations are not as they were when TPS was first granted, but that status has been renewed again and again by federal officials in the Department of Homeland Security—until Trump's 1st DHS Secretary in his 2nd term, Kristi Noem, sought to end it. She was blocked by the courts after Syrians and Haitians brought suit.
Seven Syrians and five Haitians petitioned the court to prevent the federal government from ending the temporary protected status at the end of the current term. The Haitian plaintiffs said terminating their TPS was racist and therefore a violation of the constitutional right to equal protection. The court said they could a) find no evidence that this was the case, and b) that there is no mechanism for judicial review of non-constitutional claims.
So they are all heading home, per DHS, at the end of their term. As of March 2024, there were 1.3 million migrants in the US covered by TPS, including 330,735 Haitians and 3,860 Syrians. Others are from El Salvador, Ukraine, Honduras, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burma, Nicaragua, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Lebanon, with the largest number from Venezuela at 605,015. Syrian TPS was terminated in September 2025 and Haitian TPS was ended in February 2026. The only residents falling under TPS whose term has not come to an end are those from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine, and Lebanon, all of whose statuses expire in the fall.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the court ruled that migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States but have not yet arrived in the country do not have to be considered for asylum. Basically, in 2016 there were so many people flocking to the border that border agents could not process everyone, so they counted out how many they could process and turned everyone else away.
Those who intended to make it to the port of entry and apply for asylum but were turned away brought suit, with the help of an American, IRS-designated not-for-profit group called Al Otro Lado. Al Otro Lado said that for the purposes of asylum, those who were turned away had arrived "in country" and should be processed even though they were turned away. The court said no, arriving in the country means actually arriving in the country and border patrol agents are permitted to turn people away, even those who seek to claim asylum. They made a football analogy, saying getting to the 1 yard line is not a touchtown.
It is unlikely that the case on birthright citizenship will be overturned by the Supreme Court. The thing is, Congress needs to act. But will they? They haven't so far. They need to outlaw birth tourism companies that sell citizenship, restrict immigration, agree to deportations of illegal immigrants, and give the nation time to assimilate people who are permitted to stay. Of course, they'd better do it before November when the new batch of socialists gets to the House.
Libby