The Trump administration just received another win from the Supreme Court on Thursday in the case of Mullin v. Doe, in which a 6-3 conservative majority on the court upheld the president’s decision to rescind Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and Syrians who had been previously permitted to reside in the U.S. Correcting former the abuse of TPS under the Biden administration and removing the Haitians from American communities such as Springfield, Ohio, was a key campaign pledge from Donald Trump and JD Vance in 2024, memorably marked by Trump’s colorful comments about the predatory dietary habits of the invaders.
The entire case hung upon the question of whether executive determinations and designations about the status of foreign countries (whether or not those countries should be eligible for Temporary Protected Status in the U.S.) are judicially reviewable. Arguably, this case should never have reached the Supreme Court, given the TPS statute explicitly states that the determinations of the executive (made through the Secretary of Homeland Security) are non-reviewable by the judiciary. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion upheld this common-sense interpretation, concluding that the plaintiffs could not proceed with their case. As determined by President Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, the Haitians and Syrians (as well as foreign nationals from nearly a dozen other countries) will no longer receive TPS and are thus eligible for removal from the U.S. to their home countries or to third countries.
In his opinion, Alito deftly noted that despite the promise that TPS would grant a “temporary” status, it has more often than not effectively been a permanent status. President Trump saw this as a betrayal of the American people by means of a procedural loophole and sought to rectify the abuses, as Alito summarized: “The current administration objects to lengthy TPS designations and adopted a new, restricted approach shortly after the beginning of President Trump’s second term in office … Under this approach, the Secretary of Homeland Security has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, 13 in all.”
We have here an absurd scenario in which the courts, despite being tasked with interpreting and applying the written laws, looked at the text and decided it did not apply to them because they judged these plaintiffs had some constitutional right being threatened. Despite the Supreme Court already siding with President Trump twice and staying two orders from lower courts that were intended to block executive actions, the lower courts continued their obstruction: “Nevertheless, lower courts, including those in the cases now before us, have continued to block the Secretary’s attempted terminations of other TPS designations.” These are yet more examples of the insanity of leftist lower court judges relentlessly seeking to block actions taken by the Trump administration, regardless of whether there is any sound legal basis to do so.
Constitutional Claims and Anti-Racism?
The district court’s decision to grant relief to the Haitian plaintiffs was based upon the court’s conclusion that they were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that they were victims of unconstitutional race-based discrimination. The evidence for such a claim? President Trump previously made mean remarks about Haiti and other third world countries, most notably calling them “sh*t hole countries.” Alito’s Supreme Court opinion attempted to explain how the president’s comments and his decisions regarding TPS were driven by legitimate facts about country conditions and not by racist discrimination, even mentioning Haitians’ alleged positive “contributions” to America. Ergo, there isn’t evidence of racial discrimination, the plaintiffs are likely to lose on the merits of that claim, and so they’re not entitled to relief.
While the holding of the decision is favorable to Trump, this exercise in anti-racism is ridiculous. While anti-discrimination was basically incorporated into the Constitution and the American legal system because of the Civil Rights Acts and accompanying court decisions, it is nowhere to be found in the original Constitution or amendments. Even if the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection” clause is about anti-discrimination (which is arguably a very bad interpretation of the clause), there is no reason to extend those guarantees to non-citizens, as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurrence. Thomas writes further, “The termination of Haiti’s TPS designation does not deprive respondents of ‘life, liberty, or property,’ so they have no claim even if the words ‘due process’ implicitly forbid discriminatory animus” (emphasis added).
How can a country avoid discriminating with regard to non-citizens when constructing immigration and naturalization laws? Thomas writes, “[Foreigners] have never been guaranteed a right to immigration status or citizenship based on equal protection principles, even when these laws were openly discriminatory [citing 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act] … our immigration laws have distinguished among aliens based on their national origin from the beginning.” As Thomas notes, the entire standard of anti-discrimination is absurd, since it is impossible to construct immigration and naturalization laws that do not distinguish and discriminate based on ethnicity and country of origin. Subjecting immigration law to the standard of anti-discrimination effectively means open borders, which seems to be exactly what the left wants.
Takeaway
Mullin v. Doe, while an excellent win for the Trump administration and paving the way for more removals, serves a valuable purpose in highlighting the absurdity of our current immigration laws, our judiciary, and our alleged “constitutional” interpretation. In other words, the fact that we are even debating these questions in court shows how bad the problem is. When motivated by ideological fanaticism, the left will distort and abuse any procedure, law, or judicial function. Even if the text of the law is against them, that will not stop them.
Furthermore, the 1990 statute defers to executive discretion not judicial interference, which here is a great boon for an immigration restrictionist like President Trump. However, the details surrounding this case should highlight the problematic nature of the TPS legal status, which is ripe for abuse and has been routinely abused for decades. Why should the executive be permitted to open the borders to untold amounts of immigrants from (likely) third world countries just because their country conditions are worse than ours? Why should the executive ever be permitted to have that option in his back pocket? In this case, executive discretion is on our side, but executive discretion also permitted President Biden to abuse TPS with no judicial review interfering.
We should not look to the judiciary to save us anyway, and we must work to legislatively repeal the 1990 Immigration Act and the entire TPS program. The only way to complete President Trump’s reforms, regain American sovereignty, and ensure we don’t witness abuses of TPS once again is to shut down the questionable program completely.
America need not be a global refugee dumping ground simply because the rest of the world is more dysfunctional than us. Our children need not be disinherited just because other people in other countries are born into less fortunate circumstances. It’s time we reject the moral blackmail imposed on us for too long and instead full-throatedly defend the interests of our people.
