FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 25, 2026
CONTACT
media@nipnlg.org
Washington, DC — In response to today’s U.S. Supreme Court decisions clearing the way for the Trump administration to strip Temporary Protected Status from more than 350,000 Haitians and Syrians, and ruling that people fleeing danger have no right to even ask for asylum until their feet cross onto U.S. soil, Sirine Shebaya, Executive Director of the National Immigration Project, issued the following statement:
“Today the Supreme Court decided in Mullin v. Doe that hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian members of our communities can lose everything they’ve built here by the end of this week. These are people who drive their kids to school every morning in this country, have worked the same job for a decade, pay into Social Security they may never collect from, care for their pets, and are now facing a complete disruption of their lives and futures and will almost certainly face aggressive immigration enforcement in the coming weeks.
We want to say plainly what the record already shows: the decision to end TPS is fundamentally driven by racism. The record the Court had in front of it includes a sitting president calling Haitians dog-and-cat eaters, saying they “probably have AIDS,” calling Haiti a “shithole country,” and asking why we couldn’t take people from Norway and Sweden instead. Six justices read every one of those words and ruled there is no real chance race played any part in ending protections for Haitians. Anyone should be able to recognize this for what it is: a willful decision to ignore clear and overt racism.
The immediate disastrous implications of today’s decision are undeniable. Haiti and Syria are still listed by our own State Department as too dangerous to visit. A TPS holder who has lived here for fifteen years and runs a lab studying Alzheimer’s now faces deportation to a country where his diabetes could kill him. A mother who fled a bombed street in Syria with her daughter and has spent a decade caring for her elderly, U.S. citizen parent now faces return to danger. And this is only the beginning: with Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Venezuela, and Yemen—countries whose TPS designations are now precarious—the decision today impacts at least 1.3 million people.
The Court’s second ruling today in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, in which the Court upheld the government’s policy of physically blocking asylum seekers at the border before they cross onto U.S. soil, closed another door. People standing steps from an open port of entry, in front of an immigration officer with room and time to process them, can now be turned back before they’re allowed to say the word “asylum” at all. It does not matter if they are about to be killed where they’re sent. It does not matter if the building behind that officer is empty. The Court said the law simply stops applying to a person standing on the wrong side of a line painted on a bridge.
With the dual impact of today’s two decisions, the Supreme Court is effectively turning the promises this country made to people seeking safety into nothing more than lies, and turning its back on the law, on our values, and on human decency.
Where the Supreme Court has bowed to the Trump Administration, Congress must stand up: we demand the immediate passage of citizenship legislation that will permanently protect the people placed in harm’s way by today’s callous and poorly reasoned decisions, and legislation that ensures the internationally guaranteed right to seek asylum is respected and enforced.
The National Immigration Project will keep building power with impacted communities all over this country and representing TPS holders, people who are stripped of their TPS designation because of the government’s racism, and asylum seekers in court. We will keep training the lawyers and advocates standing between our communities and detention or deportation. And we will keep building towards a humane and compassionate immigration system that rejects racism and xenophobia and that gives everyone the security they deserve."
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The National Immigration Project is a membership organization of attorneys, advocates, and community members who believe that all people should be treated with dignity, live freely, and flourish. We litigate, advocate, educate, and build bridges across movements to ensure that those most impacted by the immigration and criminal systems are uplifted and supported. Learn more at nipnlg.org. Follow the National Immigration Project on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads at @NIPNLG.