President Donald Trump’s quest to expand his deportation agenda — and the unilateral authority of his administration — was met with intense questioning Wednesday as the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the administration should be allowed to rip away temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of immigrants legally living in the U.S.
The combination cases, Mullin v. Dahlia Doe and Trump v. Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, center on the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary protected status, or TPS, for Haitians and Syrians, including whether former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem adhered to laws requiring a clear consultation process to remove the protections.
During arguments, conservative and liberal justices seemed evenly split on whether Noem acted lawfully when she moved to cancel TPS status for immigrants from the two nations.
Though Solicitor General John Sauer claimed Wednesday that “there is no judicial review” of Noem’s decisions, several of the justices, including Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, seemed dubious of the claim.
“The judicial review bar is a broad one, but it means something,” Kagan said.
