Takeaways: Supreme Court hands Trump massive wins on immigration agenda

By John Fritze, Devan Cole, Priscilla Alvarez, Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority delivered President Donald Trump a pair of significant affirmations of his immigration policy Thursday, paving the way for the administration to effectively remove more than 1 million people from the US and keep many others from entering in the first place.

The decisions, both of which were written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito over scathing dissents from the court’s three liberals, will have a sweeping impact on asylum claims at the US border and on a program known as Temporary Protected Status, a form of humanitarian relief that allows beneficiaries to live and work in the country legally.

There was also tension in the courtroom between the justices, as liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the symbolic step of reading her dissent from the bench. Alito then retorted publicly, stunning court observers accustomed to decorum from the justices.

The tension will likely build as the 6-3 court announces more decisions next week.

Here are the key takeaways from Thursday’s major victories for the Trump administration’s efforts to limit immigration.

Conservatives remove court from reviewing TPS

The court sided with Trump on Temporary Protected Status by essentially ruling that courts have no business deciding the issue in the first place.

The humanitarian program allows people who are already residing in the US to remain in the country at times of upheaval in their home countries. Under the designation, heavily vetted beneficiaries are allowed to temporarily live and work in the US legally. The law setting up TPS says that an administration’s “determination” to apply the designation cannot be reviewed by courts, but a group of Haitian and Syrian nationals said that language didn’t bar the court from looking at the process the administration used to decide.

Alito balked at that reasoning.

“This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” Alito wrote, later adding, “The secretary’s TPS designation decisions are not subject to judicial review.”

Roughly 350,000 Haitians, along with roughly 6,000 Syrians, will be directly affected by the court’s decision.

The administration is also certain to argue Alito’s opinion bars courts from reviewing other cases involving TPS. The Trump administration has attempted to end TPS for 13 out of 17 countries that had been designated for the program, and many of those decisions have been tied up in courts.

The 13 countries targeted are: Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Honduras, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cameroon, Myanmar (Burma), Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and Nicaragua.

Kagan slams majority for downplaying Trump’s words

The justices engaged in a sharp back-and-forth over Trump’s own words in describing the Haitian people.

One of the claims the Haitian TPS beneficiaries made was that Trump had acted with racial animus in shutting down the program. That was based on his comments, including his false assertion during the campaign that Haitians in Ohio were eating peoples’ pets. If the Haitians could have demonstrated that Trump’s remarks pointed to a government decision driven by racism, then they could have won their claims under the equal protection clause.

But Alito and the court’s other conservatives dismissed that argument as well.

“A person without racial bias can provide a harshly unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with TPS designations,” Alito wrote. “The criteria for TPS designations guarantee that many, if not most, designated countries have such characteristics. Haiti is no exception. It is a very poor country, and living conditions there are unquestionably difficult.”

Notably, Alito did not say what Trump’s statements were. It’s an omission liberal Justice Elena Kagan was quick to point out in her dissent.

She described Trump’s comments as “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.”

Kagan then reproduced the statements herself, including Trump’s remarks that Haitians in Ohio were “eating the dogs … . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people.”

Those statements, Kagan wrote, “fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.”

Trump administration has a decision to make on asylum

In another 6-3 opinion authored by Alito, the court blessed the controversial asylum policy known as “metering.”

It enables federal agents stationed at the border to turn back asylum seekers before they ever step foot on US soil, frustrating their ability to be formally inspected by officials — the first step in a winding process that could eventually result in them being granted asylum.

Though Trump championed the policy during his first term, it was rescinded under former President Joe Biden and officials in the second Trump administration have not said whether they actually intend to reimplement it, but they wanted the option.

During oral arguments in the case earlier this year, Assistant Solicitor General Vivek Suri told the justices that the administration “would like to be able to reinstate metering if and when border conditions justify.”

The administration’s decision to continue defending the metering policy in court reflected the reality that potential legal roadblocks to other immigration initiatives may trigger a decision to eventually turn back to it.

After returning to office, Trump has imposed a series of policies aimed at curbing legal immigration at the southern border, including by closing all ports of entry to migrants and suspending asylum adjudications. But those moves were also met with legal challenges, and courts have recently ruled against some of them.

When the metering policy was in place, it frustrated the ability of tens of thousands of migrants to move forward in seeking asylum, according to the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

TPS ruling may bring serious economic consequences

Immigrant rights groups decried the decision, and an attorney for the Haitian nationals warned that the decision would “directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths.”

The ruling may also have a significant impact on the economy.

The Haitians, many of whom have lived in the US for years, building careers, buying homes and raising children, contribute an estimated $5.9 billion to the US economy, according to an analysis by FWD.us, a policy and advocacy organization focused on immigration that has supported TPS for Haitians. They also pay $1.6 billion in federal, payroll, state and local taxes.

Nearly 190,000 Haitian TPS holders were employed in early 2025, FWD.us found. Many work in retail, hospitality, healthcare and other industries – serving as cooks and servers, stockers and packers and nursing assistants.

Jan Gautam, CEO of IHRMC Hotels & Resorts, said he will likely have to lay off roughly 20% of his staff at dozens of hotels in Florida.

“We respect the judicial system,” he told CNN. “We’ll let everyone go, and we’ll suffer and they’ll suffer.”

Nursing homes, assisted living facilities and homecare agencies expect they’ll have to replace many employees, a sizeable share of whom are Haitian TPS holders. That could cause stress and disruptions to care for many elderly Americans.

“Staff and caregivers who support older adults every day – legal employees who in some of our communities represent 8% or more of the entire workforce – can now lose their jobs overnight,” Katie Smith Sloan, CEO of LeadingAge, the national association of nonprofit and mission-driven providers of aging services, said in a statement. “There is no workforce waiting in the wings capable of replacing the long-standing relationships, in some cases built over years and even decades, that are so vital to quality care.”

Providers may have to limit nursing home admissions, close units or turn down requests for home care until the vacancies are filled, she added.

Sotomayor’s biting dissent and Alito’s stunning response

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a biting dissent in the asylum case that argued the metering policy only incentivizes unlawful border crossings – but that was only the beginning.

“More people will die,” Sotomayor wrote.

“More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will be forced to walk along the US-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them,” she added. “More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion.”

The court’s senior liberal justice seized on an ugly episode in the nation’s history in which the US turned away the MS St. Louis, a ship ferrying nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Europe in 1939. The ship later returned to Europe, where many of the passengers perished in the Holocaust.

“If the refugees on the MS St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto US soil,” Sotomayor wrote.

Sotomayor read her dissent aloud from the bench, a symbolic move that happens only a few times each term when a justice wants to emphasize their distaste of the majority opinion.

Then, in a highly unusual and tense exchange on the bench, Alito fired back at Sotomayor, suggesting that he had been blindsided by her actions. The move broke with the usually highly scripted nature of opinion releases.

Alito seemed to be taken aback by Sotomayor’s strong language, and noted that two administrations had pursued the policy. It is true that the “metering” of asylum seekers began under former President Barack Obama but it was formalized during Trump’s first term.

Responding to Sotomayor after her bench statement, Alito described the asylum policy as “orderly and humane,” before turning to his next opinion.

The 6-3 rulings pile up

The drama is likely to continue.

As the court continues to resolve some of its most politically charged cases, the justices are increasingly being divided along ideological lines. Earlier this week, the court hit a milestone by handing down more 6-3 decisions this year than it did last year.

The decisions Thursday in the immigration cases, as well as one concerning a restrictive Hawaii gun law, drove that number up even more.

In all, the court has handed down 10 opinions divided 6-3 along ideological lines. That also doesn’t include actions on the so-called emergency docket, some of which have had meaningful impacts.

Among the most significant 6-3 decisions so far this term was the court’s April ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act’s power over redistricting disputes. The decision, and several that followed from it, helped Republicans quickly redraw congressional district in Southern states like Louisiana and Alabama to give the GOP an advantage in this year’s midterm elections.

More rulings sharply dividing the court are likely to come as races to issue its remaining opinions in coming days. The court said it would hand down more opinions Monday and is expected to release decisions at least one other day next week.

Waiting in the wings are rulings in cases questioning whether Trump may fire officials at independent federal agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the legality of state bans on transgender girls competing on girls’ sports teams.

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