The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda since his return to office, with the conservative-majority court backing key policies aimed at increasing deportations and restricting entry into the United States.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has largely supported the administration’s efforts to target both undocumented immigrants and some people with legal status. The court’s three liberal justices have opposed most of the administration’s immigration actions.
The latest decisions came this week, when the Supreme Court issued three rulings that strengthened the administration’s ability to remove people from the country or prevent them from entering, including some immigrants who currently have legal protections.
On Thursday, the court ruled 6-3 that the administration could end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The humanitarian program allows migrants from countries affected by armed conflict, disasters or other dangerous conditions to live and work legally in the United States while returning home is considered unsafe.
Legal experts said the ruling could leave affected immigrants facing the choice of remaining in the United States while risking detention or returning to countries where the U.S. State Department has warned against travel because of violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping concerns.
Tirana Hassan, chief executive officer of Doctors Without Borders USA, said conditions in Haiti were not suitable for people to be returned there. Ahilan Arulanantham, an immigration law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles and lawyer for Syrian plaintiffs in the TPS case, said the ruling continued a pattern of decisions against immigrant communities.
The court also ruled 6-3 on Thursday that the government could block asylum seekers from entering the United States when officials determine border crossings are overwhelming the system. The ruling could allow the Trump administration to revive a policy known as “metering,” which was discontinued under former President Joe Biden.
Earlier in the week, the court ruled 6-3 that immigration officials do not need to meet the standard of “clear and convincing evidence” that a lawful permanent resident committed a crime before refusing to allow that person to return to the United States after traveling abroad.
Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival described the three decisions as victories for the rule of law and said Temporary Protected Status was intended to be temporary. He said the rulings provided the administration with additional tools to enforce immigration policies.
Since Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025, the Supreme Court has frequently acted on emergency requests involving immigration policies blocked by lower courts. Many of these decisions have come through the court’s emergency docket, known as the shadow docket, which allows justices to issue major rulings without the full briefing and oral arguments used in regular cases.
The court has allowed the administration to deport migrants to countries where they have no previous ties, conduct immigration enforcement operations, and end humanitarian protections including TPS and parole programs affecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
Ashley Sanchez, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Notre Dame’s law school, said immigration laws have not significantly changed but argued that the administration has chosen to apply existing laws in ways designed to restrict immigration as broadly as possible.
The current ideological balance of the court was established in 2020 after Trump appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sanchez said the conservative majority has played an important role in recent immigration decisions.
The court has also limited some Trump administration actions. In previous cases, the justices ruled that migrants must receive certain constitutional protections, including due process. The court also restricted parts of the administration’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law, to rapidly deport Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang.
The court is expected to soon issue a decision in another major immigration case involving Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for some children born in the United States.
The order directs federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for children born on U.S. soil when neither parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Lower courts have ruled the policy conflicts with the 14th Amendment, which has long been interpreted as granting citizenship to nearly all people born in the United States, with limited exceptions.
A decision in the birthright citizenship case could come as soon as Monday.
