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The Supreme Court will decide if migrants can be sent back to war zones

When can the Trump administration strip legal protections from migrants who risk death in their home countries?

Imagine that you are a foreign national vacationing in New York when a civil war breaks out in your home country. Political dissidents, as well as bystanders who are unfortunate enough to get in the way of the warring factions, are being killed by the thousands. Meanwhile, the tourist visa allowing you to remain in the United States will expire soon, and returning home could mean a death sentence.

A 1990 federal law offers humanitarian relief to many foreign nationals who face this kind of dilemma. Under the law, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may offer “temporary protected status” to noncitizens who are already present in the United States during an “armed conflict” in their home nation, or if a natural disaster or some other catastrophe has made their home country unsafe. (Prior to 1990, foreign nationals in these circumstances could sometimes remain in the US under a program called “extended voluntary departure.” The 1990 law formalized the process that determines who may stay.)

Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.

As the program’s name suggests, temporary protected status (TPS) is temporary. DHS is supposed to periodically review the list of countries whose nationals may seek this status, and to remove countries from the list once the humanitarian crisis abates. TPS holders must register, and they are ineligible if they have a felony conviction, more than one misdemeanor conviction, or if they have ties to drug trafficking or terrorism. People with TPS status may work in the United States during their temporary residence.

The Trump administration, as part of its harsh overarching approach to immigration, is hostile to the TPS program. On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order with the hyperbolic title “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” Among other things, Trump ordered his Cabinet to ensure that TPS designations “are appropriately limited in scope and made for only so long as may be necessary to fulfill the textual requirements of that statute.”

Since then, Trump’s administration terminated TPS designations for all 13 countries whose designations were due for a review. In some cases, it did so before the review was supposed to occur, and before the country’s previous designation had expired. (The full list of 13 countries includes Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Burma, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Cameroon, and Afghanistan.)

And that brings us to Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, two Supreme Court cases asking whether Trump’s apparent decision to cancel the TPS program is lawful. Doe concerns the Trump administration’s decision to strip TPS designation from Syria, a country that was recently in a civil war and that........

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