Crime & Law
Longtime Illinois Residents at Risk of Deportation After Supreme Court Ruling on Protections for Haitians, Syrians
Some longtime Illinois residents are at risk of deportation following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people from Haiti and Syria.
TPS designations are chosen for foreign nations with conditions that temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, when the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately. The program allows individuals to live and work in the U.S. legally.
More than 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians nationwide could be impacted.
Haiti was first designated for the TPS program in 2010 under the Obama administration when the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the island, and Syria received its TPS designation in 2012 shortly after civil war began. In the years that followed, those designations were extended following federal review.
“Haiti has suffered so many setbacks,” said Darryl Auguste, secretary of the Haitian American Lawyers Association of Illinois. “The assassination of the president, Jovenel (Moïse), the influx of gangs throughout the country in conjunction with the economic depreciation. … Haiti is in total disarray in regards to anyone, not even people on TPS, but anyone to return to the country.”
About 260 Haitian families in Illinois are affected by the federal ruling.
Last year, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated Haiti and Syria’s TPS designations, saying the countries are now safe enough for nationals to return to. Syrian and Haitian TPS holders sued in response and were allowed to remain in the U.S. during litigation. The district courts found Noem’s termination unlawful and said it probably violated the TPS statute for not consulting other government agencies about the countries’ current conditions.
Immigration lawyers argued that the administration ended the protections in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. During President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats.
The court majority found that the statements from Trump and his administration were not “overtly racial.” Alito said that Haitian people should not face character attacks. “But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people,” he wrote.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented, writing that the law does allow for judges to step in if officials sidestep the process for ending the protections. Race, meanwhile, does appear to have played a role, Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
“The evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat,” Kagan wrote. “Respectfully, I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.”
The 6-3 decision in the Mullin v. Doe case sides with Noem and Trump, clearing the way for the administration to begin deportations.
There may still be avenues for Haitian and Syrian people to stay in the country, Auguste said, naming asylum, work visas and refugee status as possible paths forward for those impacted.
Trump has so far terminated TPS designations for nine other countries during his second term: Venezuela, Honduras, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nicaragua and South Sudan.
According to the U.S. Department of State, Haiti and Syria maintain a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory. For Syria, the department says there’s a high risk of terrorism, unrest, kidnapping, hostage-taking, crime and armed conflict.
“We are talking about people who are already here,” said Ali Tarokh, director of development and communications at the Syrian Community Network. “They are part of our economy, they are hard workers and they are members of our society. … Sending them back to those countries, which is dangerous for U.S. citizens, is dangerous for those people (nationals) as well.”
While Syria’s 14-year civil war ended in 2024, advocacy groups like the ACLU and International Refugee Assistance Project say the humanitarian crisis is far from over, particularly as the nation still struggles to rebuild after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria in 2023.
Of the approximately 6,100 impacted Syrian residents in the U.S., approximately 500 live in Illinois.
“The disaster in this situation (for) families is the level of anxiety, the level of stress, especially in families with children,” Tarokh said. “We cannot really explain how much this community is in danger. They are a part of our neighborhoods and it’s our job to protect these people.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
