{"id":3236,"date":"2026-06-29T08:35:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2026-06-29T08:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:35:57","slug":"temporary-deportation-shield-for-immigrants-has-always-been-a-total-farce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=3236","title":{"rendered":"‘Temporary’ deportation shield for immigrants has always been a total farce"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The last 20 years of so has been a continuous adventure in re-defining the phrase \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d to include less and less pertinent things.<\/p>\n

Read more One killed in shooting at site of California World Cup fan zone<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest is that the Supreme Court has allegedly joined forces with Trump to \u201cadvance an authoritarian, white-supremacist agenda\u201d \u2014 in the words of the Illinois Democrat, Rep. Delia Ramirez \u2014 by saying he can end so-called Temporary Protected Status for immigrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A headline in the left-wing Nation magazine read, \u201cThe Supreme Court Once Again Endorses Trump\u2019s Racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s decision is facially correct in that the law says that TPS designations or revocations by the executive branch are not reviewable by the courts.<\/p>\n

Case closed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The objections to the justices\u2019 decision are purely policy-based.<\/p>\n

Trump critics and open-borders advocates don\u2019t like that Trump is now going to be allowed to end TPS \u2014 a program for temporary relief from repatriation \u2014 for Haitians, Syrians, El Salvadorans and others.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t a criticism of the court, which is obliged to make rulings on the basis of the law, not based on policy preferences.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing about the decision that forces Trump to end various TPS designations; rather, it simply allows him to do so.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s another way in which the court\u2019s ruling is obviously correct: If the executive branch can extend TPS as a matter of discretion, surely it can end it as a matter of discretion, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This would seem common sense.<\/p>\n

Yet, TPS has long been a one-way ratchet \u2014 always extended but never revoked.<\/p>\n

This has made a mockery of the word \u201ctemporary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The TPS designation for Somalis has been in effect since 1991, or for 35 years.<\/p>\n

Roughly 130 million Americans are younger that \u2014 so what is supposedly a temporary status has existed for the entire lives of nearly 40% of the country.<\/p>\n

The temporary status has been extended a couple of dozen times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s reached across seven US presidencies, if you count Trump twice, and has been in place during one-seventh of the existence of the American republic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Granted, Somalia is still misgoverned, but the civil war that was the original justification for the TPS designation is now less intense than it was at the outset.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, each of which has been designated for the last quarter-century or so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Salvador originally got the designation in 2001 after two earthquakes.<\/p>\n

More than two decades later, the Biden administration fashioned reasons for extensions that had nothing to do with those disasters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Fast Takes: Some good Dem decisions, librarians gone wild and more<\/a><\/p>\n

They included \u201csignificant storms and heavy rainfall in 2023 and 2024,\u201d as well as \u201cdangerously long periods of drought.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn\u2019t, and that justified TPS never going away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, the Biden administration admitted, progress had been made repairing the 2001 earthquake damage \u2014 yet \u201csubsequent environmental disasters, infrastructure challenges, continued climate risks, a weak macroeconomic environment, and food insecurity\u201d meant that Salvadorans couldn\u2019t return to their native country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, the overall condition of El Salvador was the problem, not a specific event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of the justification of TPS is that a country in crisis is temporarily incapable of absorbing its returning citizens.<\/p>\n

But as George Fishman of the Center for Immigration Studies notes, more than 3 million tourists <\/em>visited El Salvador in 2024.<\/p>\n

If the country can accommodate millions of foreign visitors, why is it incapable of accepting its own returning citizens?<\/p>\n

Obviously, TPS has become an enormous loophole in immigration law.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The intent of Congress was never to create an endlessly renewable de facto amnesty.<\/p>\n

The statute says the secretary of homeland security \u201cmay\u201d extend a designation in response to a specific event, but \u201cshall\u201d end the designation once that condition no longer applies.<\/p>\n

This suggests that a designation is discretionary under the law, but the revocation is mandatory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not how it\u2019s turned out.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has done its part by correctly interpreting the law \u2014 and now Congress should its job by ending this much-abused program for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Your helpful robot pal may secretly be a DSA member<\/a><\/p>\n

X: @RichLowry<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Temporary Protected Status program for immigrants has long been a one-way ratchet \u2014 always extended but never revoked \u2014 that’s made a mockery of the word \u201ctemporary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-rich-lowry"],"yoast_head":"\n'Temporary' deportation shield for immigrants has always been a total farce - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=3236\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'Temporary' deportation shield for immigrants has always been a total farce - 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