SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 2/26/2026
The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to freeze a ruling by a federal judge in New York that indefinitely postpones the termination of a program that allows Syrians to live in the United States temporarily. Pointing to earlier rulings on the court’s interim docket in which the justices granted requests from the Trump administration to pause similar lower-court rulings involving Venezuelans, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the court to “again stay a materially similar order with materially similar flaws.”
The court directed the challengers in the case to file a response by Thursday, March 5, at 4 p.m. EST.
The program at the center of the case is known as the Temporary Protected Status program. Established in 1990, it allows the Department of Homeland Security to designate a country’s citizens as eligible to remain in the United States and work when they cannot return to their home country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions there.
Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano designated Syria for the TPS program in 2012. She pointed to the “brutal crackdown” by Bashar al-Assad, who was then the country’s president.
In September 2025, roughly nine months after the Assad regime was overthrown, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she would terminate that designation, effective Nov. 21, 2025. She cited efforts by the new Syrian government, led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, to “move the country to a stable institutional governance, not a perpetuation of armed conflict.” Moreover, she added, even if “extraordinary” and “temporary” conditions continued to prevail in Syria, she had determined that it would be “contrary to the national interest” to allow the TPS designation to continue.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/02/trump-administration-asks-justices-to-allow-it-to-remove-protected-status-from-syrian-nationals/
