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Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people who have been legally living in the U.S. from Haiti under the program.
The Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s decision.
“Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent. And there’s a lot of people that came over here 15, 20 years ago underneath TPS that’s already changed their status,” Mullin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“The whole time these individuals have been here underneath the Temporary Protected Status, they could have applied for a visa. They could have applied for [lawful permanent residency (LPR).] They could have applied for different directions. But the status itself can be ended in its name itself by saying temporary,” the secretary added.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Trump administration could cut off temporary legal protections for thousands of Haitians and Syrians, ordering that federal judges had no authority to intervene on many of the challengers’ claims.
The Trump administration has attempted to end over a dozen countries from TPS, which lets citizens of designated countries be shielded from deportation and get a work authorization.
“The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the ruling.
Since the beginning of his second term, President Trump’s administration has cracked down hard on immigration, to much backlash. That backlash boiled over earlier this year when federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Trump has set his sights on TPS during his second time around in the White House as part of that immigration crackdown. The Trump Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleged that the Biden administration abused the program, claiming that temporary protections need to be temporary.
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