LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The U.S. Supreme Court gave President Trump more power to enact his immigration agenda on Thursday.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
One decision allows the administration to move forward with revoking temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The other puts limits on how immigrants can claim asylum.
FADEL: NPR's immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo is with us in studio to help us understand what this all means in practice. Good morning, Ximena.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: OK. Let's start with TPS, or temporary protected status. What are the implications of this ruling?
BUSTILLO: In a 6-3 decision, the conservative majority ruled that the president has virtually unrestrained power to end the program known as TPS. This case was specifically about TPS recipients in Haiti and Syria, which total about 300,000 people, but it has broader implications. TPS provides deportation protections, and it grants work permits, and it's given to people from specific countries affected by war, natural disasters, political instability or any other condition that might make a country unsafe to return to. Each country's designation can last six to 18 months, and that's at the discretion of the secretary of Homeland Security. Now, the court is agreeing with the government that making those designations is up to the secretary and not subject to legal review.
FADEL: So what happens to the hundreds of thousands of people who are in the U.S. on this program?
BUSTILLO: Well, they need to either adjust their status, which is very limited ways of doing so, or they need to leave the country. But if they don't, they risk falling out of status, and that could lead to an arrest, a detention or a deportation. And many also face losing their jobs as companies will not be able to continue legally employing thousands of workers. Ira Kurzban is the attorney representing the Haitian TPS holders.
IRA KURZBAN: Their families are American citizens. They have American citizen children. So we're talking in a practical manner with respect to all the TPS people. You're talking about millions of people in the United States who contribute to the economy.
BUSTILLO: He argues that Haiti, Syria and other countries are not stable enough for people to return to, and many of these people have also been here for decades. He also said that the government could immediately begin deporting people if they have received final orders of removal while the cases have been pending in courts.
FADEL: Now, there was also a second immigration decision from the court, this one related to asylum. Tell us about that one.
BUSTILLO: That was another 6-3 decision, and the court backed a policy that allows Customs and Border Protection agents to turn away asylum-seekers before they cross the U.S. border. The order says asylum-seekers need to fully cross the U.S. border to claim asylum. So essentially, migrants who are turned back by border officials under this policy technically never left the physical side of the Mexican border. So the administration argues that they are ineligible to apply for legal protections to be in the U.S., and that ruling effectively further limits who can get permission to stay in the country.
FADEL: OK. So both of these decisions make it harder for immigrants to stay here or to get here. How does this play into the administration's goal of mass deportation?
BUSTILLO: Well, DHS General Counsel James Percival said that the decisions give the agency, quote, "several more important tools to continue securing our borders." And President Trump has a broader goal of mass deportation, so to do that, the administration has been making more people eligible for deportation, even if they were already legally here. We've already seen the administration terminate TPS for nearly every country that has had it since the start of Trump's term, and the asylum ruling limits how migrants can ask for that permission to come into the U.S. These rulings allow the government to further change the immigration system.
FADEL: That's NPR's Ximena Bustillo. Thank you, Ximena.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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