The Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), which works closely with the U.S. bishops, told EWTN News that it “hopes and prays” the U.S. Supreme Court will order President Donald Trump’s administration to keep protections in place for Syrian and Haitian migrants.
On March 16, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit that challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for migrants from Haiti and Syria.
The court ordered that the protections will remain in place for the time being, until the justices make a final decision. This prevents deportations while the case is litigated. The court will hear oral arguments in the last week of April.
More than 300,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians are protected from removal based on the TPS status but would lose the ability to live and work in the United States if it is ultimately terminated.
“CLINIC hopes and prays that the Supreme Court recognizes that the administration cannot abuse its executive authority and play with human lives,” Elnora Bassey, a policy attorney for CLINIC, told EWTN News.
Bassey said “this constant back-and-forth” between the administration and the courts has put migrants who rely on those protections “in a state of despair as their future remains unknown.”
“The administration’s lawless attempts to interfere with humanitarian protections for immigrants must come to an end, and they must adhere to the legal process set in place to ensure the integrity of that process remains intact,” Bassey said.
“Immigrants, just like all other human beings, ought to be treated with dignity and respect, and the administration must follow the law of the land and provide humanitarian protections rather than disregard the plain language of the statute to protect vulnerable human beings,” she said.
The lawsuit comes as the Trump administration seeks to revoke TPS status for migrants from nearly a dozen countries, action that has faced legal challenges. These moves are part of Trump’s broader efforts to restrict immigration and enforce mass deportations.
Andrew Arthur, former immigration judge and resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told EWTN News he is “reasonably sure” the Supreme Court will ultimately side with the Trump administration in the lawsuit.
He said the court’s decision to allow the TPS designation to remain in place until the case is settled “keeps everybody in place until the decision is made.”
“It basically maintains the status quo until the case is completed, to err on the side of caution,” Arthur said.
He said he believes the Trump administration will prevail because law permits TPS designations to be offered in response to a “substantial but temporary disruption of living conditions” that prevents people from returning to their home countries safely. He said it’s “meant for a very short period of time.”
Arthur said conditions in Syria are more stable than amid the 2012 designation during the civil war. Haiti’s issues, he said, are more long-standing and Haiti is “no more dangerous … than it was 10 years ago.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) declined to comment on this specific development and referred to previous statements in which the bishops have urged the administration to keep TPS status in place.
Specifically regarding Haiti, USCCB Committee on Migration Chair Bishop Brendan Cahill and Committee on International Justice and Peace Bishop A. Elias Zaidan issued a joint statement in January that said “there is simply no realistic opportunity for the safe and orderly return of people.”
