The Daily - Supreme Court Delivers Big Wins for Trump’s Immigration Agenda

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

The Supreme Court delivered big wins for President Trump’s immigration agenda on Thursday. Two polarized decisions closed off another path to seek legal status in the United States and potentially set the stage for hundreds of thousands of people to be deported. Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration policy for The New York Times, explains how these rulings have given Mr. Trump new tools to reshape immigration in America. Guest: Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy in the United States for The New York Times. Background reading:  The Supreme Court expanded Mr. Trump’s power over immigration. Photo: Kenny Holston/The New York Times For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kidrow-F. This is the day. In two polarized six-three decisions on Thursday, the Supreme Court delivered big wins for President Trump's immigration agenda, closing off yet another path to seek legal status in the U.S., and potentially setting the stage for hundreds of thousands of people to be deported. Today, my colleague Hamid Ali Aziz, on how those rulings have given Trump new tools to reshape immigration in America.

It's Friday, June 26th. Hamid, welcome back to The Daily. Thank you for having me. We're going to talk about the specifics of these two new decisions from the Supreme Court. One of them addresses temporary protected status, TPS for immigrants, and the other involves claims of asylum. But before we do that, can you just start by putting these rulings into context for me? How important are they to the Trump administration's immigration agenda? Yeah, they're very important.

These are major victories for the Trump administration, in particular when it comes to this ruling on TPS. I mean, this is something that has been a priority of the Trump administration, of Stephen Miller, to unwind these protections for nearly a decade now. And every time they try to cut back these rulings affecting us, hundreds of thousands of people, they were stymied by the federal courts. And so today really is a culmination of that effort in which the Supreme Court is essentially saying that this is the decision of the president and the Department of Homeland Security. Okay, so if we're going to look at these rulings one by one, it sounds like we should start with the TPS order. So first, just

remind us what TPS is, actually, what this case centers on. Yeah, temporary protected status really is as the phrase is defined. I mean, this is a program that allows immigrants, regardless of their status, regardless of whether or not they have a deportation order, the ability to be protected from deportation and have work authorization because their home country is too dangerous to deport them to. And historically, that's because of conflict wars or natural disasters. In those instances, the DHS Secretary has just decided that this group of people will be protected from deportation. Okay. And what was the challenge that the court was considering here? So what happened here was really when you look back to the first Trump administration, there's been a focus amongst Trump officials to

go after this program. Specifically, the concern has been that this temporary protected status program is no longer temporary, that people are on TPS for years, for decades, and it's essentially turning into, in their words, an amnesty. So you saw the first Trump administration attempt to unwind TPS for groups, including Haitians, and they were stymied by court challenges. Biden comes in. Biden totally explodes the TPS program, really expands the pools of population who could get TPS. It's really an unprecedented level of people. And so this administration, the Trump administration part two, comes in really with a focus on TPS, including it's in some of the first day executive orders. And so DHS secretary at the time, former DHS secretary, Noam, unwinds TPS protections for Venezuelans, for Haitians, for most of the populations that have TPS. And so in this case, you have Haitians and Syrians who she unwinded the protections for last year. And the advocates representing these populations essentially are saying she didn't follow the right process

and are pointing out all these deficiencies with the process with which she undid the protections. Got it. So advocates representing those groups of migrants sue the administration saying they didn't go about the unwinding correctly. And that case ultimately makes it to the Supreme Court. Yeah, exactly. And the Supreme Court in its ruling said that the decision to unwind TPS is not reviewable by the judicial branch. That judges do not have. the ability to come in and stop a DHS decision unwinding TPS. In fact, this is in the power of the DHS secretary. It's in the statute. It is not reviewable by the courts. Meaning, essentially, the court is saying there is no role for us here in stopping the

executive branch from winding this program down. That's just not our job. It's not in the law. We can't do that. Yeah, that's right. So you called this a pretty big win for the administration. How? Like, what does this mean for them on a practical level?

Yeah, so this decision specifically affects Haitians and Syrians. And when it comes to Haitians, there's more than 300,000 Asians who have TPS, Syrians. It's around 6 to 7,000. But really what this decision does is it opens the ability for the administration to unwind TPS whole scale. And we have multiple decisions coming down the road. We have a decision that the DHS Secretary will have to make on TPS for Salvadorans, for Ukrainians. For Salvadorans, that's more than 100,000 people.

For Ukrainians, that's more than 100,000 people. There are other court cases right now involving TPS in the lower courts, thousands of those people. So really, you're starting to think about a pretty, broad group of people who could suddenly lose status and who could potentially become targets for ice. Essentially, you have the situation in which the Trump administration may now be able to go one by one through these populations and remove protections for them. Yeah, and it could also really allow the administration to boost their deportation numbers because it opens up these individuals for potential removal from the United States.

But it also has some downstream effects as well. There is a belief that TPS and these types of programs incentivize people to cross into the country illegally. And one of the administration's goals has been to show this picture of the United States as not a plight, place where people who are in the country illegally can comfortably live. And so this is just another facet of that approach, which is you are not going to have the ability to be protected from deportation, to work legally, and to be safe from an ICE officer coming to your door, arresting you and placing you in a detention cell. Right. I remember one of the big criticisms of the Biden administration when it expanded TPS was that this was creating an incentive for people to come.

Yeah, I mean, the Biden administration would dispute that, but incentives and what causes people to cross the border is something that DHS has long study, because they are constantly, regardless of administration, really worried about spikes at the southern border. That really hasn't been an issue for this administration because they have sent this, again, they've sent the picture that if you cross into the country illegally, not only will you likely be turned back, but even if you are able to make it into the United States, your life is going to be very uncomfortable. You're not going to have the same type of ability to stay in the country indefinitely and make a life for yourself.

But just to inhabit the other side of this issue, the immigration advocates who challenged the administration on their efforts to unwind these programs. their contention right is that these programs are worth keeping because they are humanitarian efforts. They protect people who otherwise would be living in really dangerous countries. And keeping them around is part of what makes America what it is. Yeah, the whole idea here, ultimately when it comes to TPS, is that we can't deport these people to their home country because their home country is in some state of Christ. Either there was an earthquake or some intense natural disaster or there's war and conflict. I mean, you look at Haiti, which has been in turmoil for years now with issues with government,

with protection of people, of policing, of all kinds of intense conflict, as our colleagues here have covered really extensively. And so the idea of deporting Haitians there and protecting them from that, do you? deportation for these advocates, they felt like it was incredibly important because you'd be sending people to definite danger. And so that's the whole idea behind the program is to protect people from that. And these conversations were had during the Biden administration. And the whole idea, when TPS exploded was there were a lot of advocates who were pushing the administration to expand the population of TPS, to protect people from a DPS.

deportation because of the various conflicts across the globe. But those types of arguments really fall on deaf ears with this administration. I believe at one point Stephen Miller, when somebody brought up the idea that in one of these cases this was saving people from being sent to a conflict zone, he said that that was a large part of the globe. So should we bring in everybody from across the globe? Is that what we should be doing? So that's their perspective.

It doesn't really move them, this idea that there's conflict or natural disasters and we can't deport people to those countries. You've started to explore this, Hamid, but beyond just how hard it is potentially going to be for people to go back to their home countries in some cases, what are the practical implications of removing groups of this size? Is it even possible? And what would it look like? Yeah, I mean, the whole idea of, these historic mass deportations, unlike America had ever seen before in the run-up to this administration. We haven't seen that thus far. They have certainly really ramped up efforts inside the country and deporting people from inside the country,

but they are not at a point where they could look at a population of 500,000 people who lose status, for example, in a given month, and be able to target those people. and deport them quickly. There's a lot of bureaucracy that's involved. This population, this group of people who got TPS, they have been in constant contact with the federal government sharing their information on where they live. They have that information.

But the ability to arrest people is just one level to it. They have to have space to detain these people. They have to have planes to. put these people on, and perhaps most importantly, they have to get the countries to agree to take them. They have to get travel documents for these people, and they have to get Haiti or Syria or whatever other country to agree to large-scale deportations. Now, this administration has made that a massive priority, getting countries on board and taking back their own nationals, and they are going to other countries to deport so-called third country nationals.

So people, not from that country, so they deported people to Eswatini, to South Sudan, to Cameroon, who were from countries across the globe. So that's certainly their priority, but a lot is really in the way right now of them being able to act on this population and quickly deport them. So there are a lot of practical obstacles standing in their way, but we do know this administration is highly motivated to do as many deportations as possible. So if they are able to get to a point where these removals really do start happening, just talk about the potential impact of that in the United States. I mean, you've said these programs have been around for a really long time. I'd imagine that means these people, in many cases, have been here for a while. Yeah, and in the case of the Haitians who've had TPS, at least some of them who have had protection since 2010. And so that's a long period of time for people to build communities, to create lives for themselves, really become ingrained in the areas that they live.

Some of these groups have actually pointed out how Haitians, for example, have become really a part of the health care and elder care industry. So that's going to have a major impact on those industries, the American economy, on these communities. And after this ruling, I think some of these people are just going to have to decide whether or not they go into the shadows and they try to avoid the government trying to find them. Or they decide, as the Trump administration wants, to leave this country voluntarily. there are all kinds of downstream effects based off of this ruling. Okay, so huge consequences, essentially, from this decision. Yeah, definitely. And it was only one of two rulings by the Supreme Court,

the second of which does not have the same type of practical effect. But it does tell us something about the Trump administration and their belief of immigration enforcement and where they plan to go on this topic. We'll be right back. Okay, so let's talk about that second ruling. What do we need to know about the background of this case and how the court ruled on it? Yeah, so starting in 2016, the Obama administration did something called metering.

What was happening was individuals were coming to port of entry, you know, the area where people cross into the United States of the southern border. and they were right at that port of entry, going up to the officers and claiming asylum. And what the Obama administration did, really on a small scale, was limit the number of people who could on any given day go up to the officers and claim asylum. The Trump administration came in 2017 and later on really expanded that practice. And so for these advocates and immigration lawyers, they were contesting the idea that the government could stop these people from attempting to claim asylum at the port of entry, that that was actually violating the law. And what the Supreme Court said today was that this whole concept with which asylum application rests on, this idea of people can claim asylum once they arrive in the United States. Well, you're not arriving in the United States if you're in Mexico. Basically, the court is saying that if you come from Mexico to a port of entry, you're not entitled to claim asylum if you haven't crossed into the country at that point.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And you said this decision would be less immediate in terms of its practical implications. What did you mean by that? Well, this administration has essentially shut down the southern border. So if you're thinking about the next day effects of this specific order, it's not as massive as that TPS order, but it does tell us something about the Trump administration and where they stand on asylum. I mean, if this was an administration that was supporting access to asylum at the southern border, then this decision really would have been a blow for them. But that is not something that they are trying to do. They are not trying to allow people to have more access to asylum.

So essentially, what the administration gets out of this is closing what they see as a really problematic loophole in the system. You said this was representative of where the Trump administration planned to go in its immigration strategy. Just say what you meant by that. Yeah, you know, both of these decisions, the TPS decision and this border decision are instances in which the administration is really taking advantage of immigration laws on the books, finding every nook and cranny ability to stop people from coming or try to remove them from the United States. And I think it really reflects a more meticulous approach to immigration enforcement. So, you know, we saw during phase one with Greg Bevino and Christy Noem this campaign in big American cities,

pulling people over, arresting people and asking questions later. Right. And this phase, too, is really much more, like I said, meticulous, under the radar, subtle, but could potentially have just as much impact. Yeah, it's been interesting. If the story of the first year of the second Trump administration was this kind of shock-in-aw immigration strategy that grabbed all of these headlines, that has seemed much less the story recently.

I mean, there's been a lot more focus on the Iran war, on affordability, and you've seen fewer of those attention-grabbing raids and big deployments of federal immigration agents. Yeah, and that's our purpose. You know, the new DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, has been public about this idea that immigration enforcement should continue, but he just wants it to be a lot quieter. So we're not seeing those major operations.

We're not seeing, for example, flights of people sent to a prison in El Salvador, 200-something people under the Alien Enemies Act. But when you start to think about this group of Haitians who now are hundreds of thousands are losing status that the administration could potentially deport on a much quieter basis, that's just as effective. if not much more effective than those a one-off, more headline-grabbing instances. Yeah, we heard a little bit about that quieter approach from an immigration judge who spoke with us earlier in the week on the show

and this sense that there is this kind of broader vision at work, which is to pursue bigger changes kind of behind the scenes, but that may actually be more lasting in the immigration system, writ large. Yeah, I think one of the benefits of a quieter approach for the administration is having the ability to cement some of these really sweeping changes, for example, to TPS or that border policy, but also when you conduct your arrests and deportations on a quieter level, then

you don't have as much of a community pushback of. of mass protests of really essentially chaos on American streets, and you're able to effectively continue to deport people and have that same effect, but without the complications. So you're saying, Hamid, that actually both things are happening at once. There is this kind of approach to dealing with the systems and the laws, and at the same time, they're still rounding people up. Yeah, exactly.

In recent weeks, there have been days, in which more than 1,500 people, for example, I've been arrested on a given day. That's a large number. It's just not happening with video cameras and news crews in a big American city, with DHS officials really being out there. It's just happening much quieter. And this administration with these rulings now has the ability to target more people, to strip protections, to try to deport.

more people. And if anything, I think it's a real affirmation at their goals, their beliefs, their ideas, that in fact, this whole time when they've been saying that judges should not be so involved with these types of actions that they were right, according to the Supreme Court, and I think that no doubt gives them the confidence moving forward to lean in to what they were doing, to be bolder and to pursue the type of permanent change that they are seeking in this country, which is deportations, which is stripping people of protections, and to force people to leave this country if they don't have a way to remain permanently. Well, Hamid, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Iran struck a container ship that was passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, testing the deal that the U.S. and Iran reached to reopen traffic through the channel. The drone attack came hours after Iran had warned oil tankers that the only route through the strait was through its waters. Ships had been using a route on the southern side of the street near the coast of Oman. It wasn't clear how the strike would affect the ongoing peace negotiations,

but it was a signal of Iran's control over the strait and ability to shut it down. And more than 24 hours after back-to-back earthquakes hit Venezuela, the government struggled to respond to the scale of death and destruction across the country. The worst of the damage has been reported in a coastal state north of Caracas, the capital, where hundreds of residential high-rise buildings and multiple hospitals had collapsed. The government reported that at least 235 people were killed, and hundreds more were missing. A lack of first responders and equipment meant that on Thursday, much of the search and rescue effort was left up to individuals.

Who identified people trapped under the rubble, and called out for their loved ones. Today's episode was produced by Muj Zady and Astachatharvedi, with help from Carlos Prieto and Chris Benderov. It was edited by Devin Taylor. and Michael Benoit. And contains music by Marion Lazzano. Our theme music is by Wonderly.

This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Special thanks to Julie Turkowitz, Isayenne Arara, Fabiola Ferreiro, Maria Victoria Fermin, T. B. Sci Romero, and Adriana Loreiro Fernandez. That's it for the daily. I'm Natalie Kittrow-F. See you on Sunday.