Elora Mukherjee writes:

On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration sweeping power to remove the legal right to live in America for Haitians and Syrians who are here under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. For more than three decades, T.P.S. enabled highly vetted immigrants from countries ravaged by war or natural disaster to remain in America.

In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted Haitians the right to apply for T.P.S. after a devastating earthquake. Two years later, Syrians received the same designation in recognition of the brutal repression of the Syrian government. The United States government has repeatedly extended these T.P.S. designations because these countries remain too dangerous to permit safe return. During this time, T.P.S. has allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians to live and work lawfully in the United States.

But no longer. In a 6-to-3 opinion, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration virtually free rein to end the program.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided at several points in her tenure to arbitrarily scuttle T.P.S. designation for 13 countries, including Haiti and Syria. This was among the most insidious examples of the second Trump administration’s cruel treatment of immigrants. It seemed, as well, an effort to turn legal immigrants into undocumented migrants. After Thursday’s decision, some one million T.P.S. holders — out of nearly 1.3 million people who hold T.P.S. protections — are at risk of immediate arrest, detention and deportation.

In a country where we regularly lament a broken immigration system, T.P.S. has been a rare, long-running success story. In the years before T.P.S., the executive branch granted nationality-based safe haven on an ad hoc basis. That protection was streamlined and rationalized after Congress passed the law creating T.P.S. in 1990. Since then, T.P.S. applicants have been subject to an initial exhaustive vetting process, continual review thereafter and mandatory termination or disqualification if they, later, commit one felony or at least two misdemeanors.

People who passed the rigorous vetting process were eligible for protection from deportation, protection from detention based on immigration status and authorization to work.

And work they have. T.P.S. holders are medical professionals, reporters, business owners, caretakers and construction workers. According to the bipartisan immigration policy organization FWD.us, T.P.S. holders contribute about $29 billion annually to the U.S. economy, in addition to paying $7.8 billion in taxes.

To grant or remove T.P.S. designation for people from a particular country, the statute required an administration to consult with the State Department, receive a review of country conditions and provide an explanation regarding its decision. In siding with the Trump administration, the court has essentially thrown out that careful system of checks and balances. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

In the coming weeks, the United States plans to provide a welcome gift to white South Africans entering the United States as refugees.

They will get an Android tablet, an American flag and copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They will also receive a packet of literature that provides a sanitized, Trump-approved view of American and South African history, one that criticizes racial equity and civil rights laws and promotes claims of discrimination against white people.

The welcome bags include a report commissioned by Mr. Trump during his first term that downplays the role of slavery in the country’s founding, and a children’s book accusing South Africa’s government of “favoring the Black population.”

The gifts would be the latest step by the Trump administration to welcome the white minority in South Africa, even as the president maintains a ban on refugees fleeing from war and persecution everywhere else in the world. [Continue reading…]