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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week on President Trump’s push to strip temporary protected status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians living in the United States. The TPS program grants protection from deportation and work authorization to immigrants whose home countries are deemed unsafe to return to, most often because of war or natural disaster. The case could ultimately have ramifications for more than 1 million TPS holders from over a dozen countries.

TPS holders from Haiti and Syria say their countries remain unsafe and that DHS did not follow proper procedure. The lawsuit brought by Haitian TPS holders also accuses the administration of being motivated by racism — an allegation supported by a lower court ruling in February.

“Haiti is still in bad shape, and [TPS holders] cannot return there. So, you can imagine now the uncertainty that they live with on a daily basis,” says Vilès Dorsainvil, a plaintiff in Trump v. Miot, the case brought by Haitian TPS holders. Dorsainvil is the co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio. President Trump targeted the Haitian community in Springfield in 2024, falsely saying Haitian residents were eating pet dogs and cats. “We’ve been scapegoated as a community,” says Dorsainvil.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the justices heard oral arguments on President Trump’s push to strip temporary protected status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians living in the United States. The TPS program grants protection from deportation and work authorization to immigrants whose home countries are deemed unsafe to return to, most often because of war or natural disaster. Last year, then-Secretary of DHS Kristi Noem said recent extensions of TPS for Haitians and Syrians were not justified or necessary.

DOJ Board Says Millions of Immigrants Can Be Jailed During Removal Proceedings

In separate lawsuits, the TPS holders charged that the government did not follow proper procedure in making that decision and that their home countries are still unsafe. The cases were combined to be heard before the court Wednesday. The Haitian lawsuit also accuses the Trump administration of being motivated by racism, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. District Court Judge Ana Reyes agreed, ruling the decision was likely made because of “hostility to nonwhite immigrants,” unquote.

This is Geoffrey Pipoly, a lawyer representing the Haitian plaintiffs.

GEOFFREY PIPOLY: The true reason for the termination is the president’s racial animus towards nonwhite immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular. The president has disparaged Haitian TPS holders specifically as undesirables from a, quote, “s—hole country,” and days after falsely accusing them of, quote, “eating the dogs and eating the cats of Americans,” he vowed that he would terminate Haiti’s TPS. And that is exactly what happened.

GEOFFREY PIPOLY: The true reason for the termination is the president’s racial animus towards nonwhite immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular. The president has disparaged Haitian TPS holders specifically as undesirables from a, quote, “s—hole country,” and days after falsely accusing them of, quote, “eating the dogs and eating the cats of Americans,” he vowed that he would terminate Haiti’s TPS. And that is exactly what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: All three liberal justices pressed the administration on this question. This is an exchange between Justice Sotomayor and D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general.

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR: Now, we have a president saying, at one point, that Haiti is a, quote, “filthy, dirty and disgusting s—hole country” — I’m quoting him — and where he complained that the United States takes people from such countries instead of people from Norway, Sweden or Denmark, where he declared illegal — where he declared “illegal” immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as “poisoning the blood of America.” I don’t see how that one statement is not a prime example of the Arlington example at work and showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision. D. JOHN SAUER: All the statements that they cite, as to the secretary and as to the president — and, obviously, there’s an issue there about which one you’re going to weigh more heavily — none of them, not a single one of them, mentions race or relates to race.

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR: Now, we have a president saying, at one point, that Haiti is a, quote, “filthy, dirty and disgusting s—hole country” — I’m quoting him — and where he complained that the United States takes people from such countries instead of people from Norway, Sweden or Denmark, where he declared illegal — where he declared “illegal” immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as “poisoning the blood of America.” I don’t see how that one statement is not a prime example of the Arlington example at work and showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision.

D. JOHN SAUER: All the statements that they cite, as to the secretary and as to the president — and, obviously, there’s an issue there about which one you’re going to weigh more heavily — none of them, not a single one of them, mentions race or relates to race.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Solicitor General D. John Sauer being questioned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The court’s six conservative justices signaled skepticism over the lower court’s rulings and in May had permitted the Trump administration to revoke TPS for Venezuelans in an unsigned shadow docket opinion. This case could ultimately have ramifications for more than a million TPS holders from over a dozen countries.

For more, we go to Springtown, Ohio — Springfield, Ohio, where we’re joined by Vilès Dorsainvil. He is a TPS holder and a plaintiff in the case. He’s also co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio. President Trump targeted the Haitian community in Springfield, falsely saying Haitian residents were eating pet dogs and cats.

Thank you so much for being with us, Vilès Dorsainvil. If you can start off by laying out what happened in this case, why you brought it, and where you think the Supreme Court is going?

VILÈS DORSAINVIL: I think that since after — thank you for having me.

I think that since after 2024, we’ve been scapegoated as a community, and we’ve been accused of eating pets in the community, and even though the local authority rejected that claim. And we felt the urgency of being the plaintiff in the case, not only in the case of Miot v. Trump, but in the case of the Syrians in Northern California, as well, just to bring that, our story, before the court, because we are here on TPS, and it means a lot to us. And I think that being a plaintiff would mean that we are ready to stand with our people. We are ready to normally let the judicial system or the judicial branch know that we are at a risk of deportation. We are — there could be family separation. There could be, normally, the economic and community disruption. So, when we know how much is at stake if TPS is ended, we agreed to normally be a plaintiff on that case.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Vilès Dorsainvil, what has been the impact on the Haitian community of Springfield since President Trump began his vile and racist statements targeting your community during the 2024 campaign?

VILÈS DORSAINVIL: I think it has been impacting the community in so many areas. The first thing is that, you know, the leader of — Trump is normally a leader saying things that maybe he should not say. And because of that, other people who are following him would normally use those conspiracy theories to target us in the community.

And the second thing it’s — the impact is because in our community, because of that, folks are afraid, because they believe that would escalate to mass violence against them. And the community has been disrupted since then. We are still living with the consequence of those comments.

So, you would see that the folks in the community who understand that would rally with us and stand in solidarity with us, because they know that, first thing, that we are people with ethic and moral, and all that we’ve been looking for is a safe haven and a place to work and continue to send our kids to school, but we’ve been the victims of a leader that should normally focus on protecting a vulnerable group of people or protecting the communities, but ended up being the person who put some type of labels on people in the community. So, it has been a very difficult thing, so unsettling thing for us just to live with. And up to now, we are still normally living with it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, you are a recipient of temporary protected status. Could you tell us your story, why you had to leave Haiti? And what do you say to those Americans who say temporary protected status is supposed to be just that, temporary, not permanent?

VILÈS DORSAINVIL: I left Haiti because I was a pastor assigned back to Haiti from Jamaica in 2018, and in 2020, I became a target because the hoodlums started asking me money that I didn’t have, and my mother suggested that I leave to come to a safer place. And this is why I left Haiti, just to come here. And when I came here, I started working with the community. And TPS would mean a lot to me by the fact that it allows me to stay here and to work and to continue to provide for myself and provide for my family.

And I believe that it is the same for other members in our community. They are under TPS. They are TPS holders, because at this point in time the country in Haiti is still in bad shape, and they cannot return there. So, you can imagine now the uncertainty that they live with on a daily basis by the fact that they know if TPS ends, there is possibility for them to be detained and to be deported. And you can imagine that they feel that they are not safe, even though they came here to be safe. And this is all that is at risk in this particular case.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end with UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham, who is the lead counsel for the Syrian plaintiffs in Mullin v. Doe, which centers Trump’s attempts to terminate TPS for Syria. She is here in an exchange with Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH: It’s not the Assad regime anymore, though. I mean that the whole thing was the Assad regime, after 53 years of complete oppression and brutal treatment, it’s gone. So, do you agree the Assad regime change is a significant change in the history of that country and the Middle East more broadly? AHILAN ARULANANTHAM: Anybody would agree with that, Your Honor. But — JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH: OK, well, that’s an important marker then, because that’s — that’s a big shift in both Syria, but also the posture of other countries toward Syria, at least as I — I don’t pretend to be an expert, but that’s my understanding of what’s the backdrop here. AHILAN ARULANANTHAM: The State Department’s own reports believe, of course, Assad — they recognize Assad has ended, but they say active violence in every part of the country. The daycare that Laila Doe’s daughter went to got bombed. The building next to it has been bombed again in southern Syria. That’s not the same conflict. It’s the Israeli incursion. There’s a war between Turkey and Kurdistan — Kurds going on in the north. There’s still lots of conflict, according to the State Department’s accounts in the CRS report about this.

JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH: It’s not the Assad regime anymore, though. I mean that the whole thing was the Assad regime, after 53 years of complete oppression and brutal treatment, it’s gone. So, do you agree the Assad regime change is a significant change in the history of that country and the Middle East more broadly?

AHILAN ARULANANTHAM: Anybody would agree with that, Your Honor. But —

JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH: OK, well, that’s an important marker then, because that’s — that’s a big shift in both Syria, but also the posture of other countries toward Syria, at least as I — I don’t pretend to be an expert, but that’s my understanding of what’s the backdrop here.

AHILAN ARULANANTHAM: The State Department’s own reports believe, of course, Assad — they recognize Assad has ended, but they say active violence in every part of the country. The daycare that Laila Doe’s daughter went to got bombed. The building next to it has been bombed again in southern Syria. That’s not the same conflict. It’s the Israeli incursion. There’s a war between Turkey and Kurdistan — Kurds going on in the north. There’s still lots of conflict, according to the State Department’s accounts in the CRS report about this.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s UCLA law professor Arulanantham during Wednesday’s oral arguments, responding to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Vilès Dorsainvil, we thank you so much for being with us, co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, a TPS holder and plaintiff in the Supreme Court case.

Coming up, “no school, no work, no shopping,” the rallying cry of workers around the United States today, marking May Day, International Workers’ Day. Organizers with the May Day Strong coalition say over 3,000 protests and events are scheduled. We’ll go to Los Angeles and Chicago. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: “There Is Power in a Union” by Billy Bragg, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.

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Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Juan González co-hosts Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. González has been a professional journalist for more than 30 years and a staff columnist at the New York Daily News since 1987. He is a two-time recipient of the George Polk Award.

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