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Supreme Court hands Trump 2 wins on immigration
Both decisions were authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito
The Supreme Court, in a pair of 6-3 decisions written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump has judicially unreviewable power to end temporary humanitarian protections for more than a million legal immigrants and can bar migrants from crossing into the U.S. from Mexico to request asylum. “Taken together,” the “two rulings expand Trump’s authority to implement his crackdown on immigration,” The Wall Street Journal said.
Who said what
The first decision cleared the way for Trump to end Temporary Protected Status for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, many of whom “have lived and worked in the United States for decades and have American children,” The Associated Press said. The ruling is “expected to reverberate beyond those two communities, affecting approximately 1.3 million immigrants from 17 countries” who also hold TPS status, The Washington Post said.
Alito said the relevant 1990 law barred the courts from reviewing an administration’s decisions to revoke TPS, and he dismissed arguments that Trump’s many racially derogatory statements illegally tainted the decision. “Notably, Alito did not say what Trump’s statements were,” CNN said, an “omission liberal Justice Elena Kagan was quick to point out in her dissent.” Trump’s comments, including that Haitians eat dogs and cats, come from a “shithole” country and “probably have AIDS,” are “so repellent and racially inflected,” she wrote, “that the majority declines to put them in print.”
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The justices have “one other signature Trump policy on immigration” to rule on this term, the Journal said: his “bid to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.” That’s likely to come down next week.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
