The Trump administration is pushing to strip immigrants of their temporary protected status, arguing that their countries are no longer safe.
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Published February 26, 2026
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court to allow President Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with its plan to end deportation protections for 6,000 Syrian immigrants living in the country.
The department’s request Thursday came in the form of an emergency appeal to the high court and was the latest example of the Trump administration using this tactic.
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The appeal asks the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling in November that blocks the administration’s move to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrians.
The request is the latest effort by the Trump administration to restrict immigration, legal or otherwise, to the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security is moving broadly to eliminate TPS, a program that allows foreign nationals already in the United States to remain in the country due to instability or danger in their homeland.
TPS is recognized, for example, in cases of war, environmental disasters, and other disasters. This provides deportation protection and allows you to work in the United States.
But the Trump administration is moving to end TPS protections for citizens of 12 countries, including Haiti, Myanmar, Somalia and Yemen, even as critics warn those countries remain in turmoil.
Efforts to strip TPS protections have faced setbacks in lower courts, but the Trump administration has twice successfully appealed the case to the conservative-controlled Supreme Court.
These Supreme Court decisions in May and October paved the way for the Trump administration to strip TPS from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.
TPS was first granted to Syrians in 2012, as the country was embroiled in a bloody civil war that displaced millions of people.
The civil war ended in December 2024 with the ouster of former leader Bashar al-Assad.
The Trump administration supports the new government of interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa.
It also argues that there is no longer a need for TPS because Syria “no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returned Syrian nationals.”
In November, U.S. Judge Katherine Polk Failla blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Syrians.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York subsequently refused to block the order.
