President Donald Trump’s administration urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to end temporary protections for thousands of Syrians who have been living in the United States since the government’s brutal crackdown on protesters fifteen years ago.
The administration filed an emergency appeal at the high court, the first of 2026, asking the justices to not only let it end Temporary Protected Status for the Syrians but also to decide broader questions about the president’s power to make similar decisions in other cases.
TPS allows people who arrived from certain countries at times of upheaval to temporarily live and work in the US legally. As part of a broader effort to curb immigration, Trump has sought to end the status for multiple groups.
The Supreme Court has afforded the administration wide deference to cancel the designations in the past, including in a case involving Venezuelans with TPS status that the court decided in May. And it reiterated that position in a second emergency ruling in Oct
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who has argued that courts don’t have the power to review the TPS decisions, urged the Supreme Court to take up the issue on the merits or else lower courts would “continue to impede the termination of temporary protection that the secretary has deemed contrary to the national interest, tying those decisions up in protracted litigation with no end in sight.”