STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Trump Administration says Haitians and Syrians who have been in the United States under temporary protected status now have two choices - they can apply for a new legal status...
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Or they can leave the country. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here underneath a permanent status, or we'll help you get back to your country. We'll actually give you a plane ticket plus roughly $2,100 to help you reestablish when you get there. But temporary protective status, according to the courts and in its name itself, is not permanent status.
FADEL: A Supreme Court ruling last week upended more than a decade of protections for Haitians and Syrians with TPS, and it put protections for hundreds of thousands of other immigrants in question. The ruling was a win for Trump legally, but is it a win politically?
INSKEEP: Our senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson has been looking into that. Mara, good morning.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Before we get to the politics, let's start with the facts. What does happen here with 330,000 Haitians and Syrians?
LIASSON: Markwayne Mullin did not directly answer whether the administration has plans for mass deportations of these immigrants, and CNN's Jake Tapper pushed Mullin on whether Haiti and Syria were safe enough for people to return. Remember, the whole point of TPS, temporary protected status, is to give protections to people whose countries - home countries are too unsafe, either from war or natural disaster or other factors. And Mullin emphasized, as you heard him say, that this program was meant to be temporary. He told Tapper, quote, "maybe they can go back there and restore their country."
INSKEEP: And the Supreme Court ruled that the administration has discretion to make this decision in the way that they want. Also the court ruled on asylum cases as well, right?
LIASSON: That's right. The court also reaffirmed the Trump administration's ability to restrict who can apply for asylum in the United States. The Constitution does give the executive branch control over immigration, and that's a power that Donald Trump has been using very aggressively. But both of these cases uphold the ways that Trump is trying to fundamentally reshape not just illegal immigration, but also the legal immigration system.
INSKEEP: But the question that's on your mind is a little different. So they're winning in court. They're getting to do what they want. Your question is whether that is politically good for the administration.
LIASSON: Right. And that remains to be seen. You know, originally, Trump's immigration agenda was very popular because it focused on things people really cared about - securing the border, deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records. But as time went on, it morphed into something different, like going after green card holders, people who'd been in the United States working without a criminal record for decades.
Some of these people were very integrated into the economies of their communities, like Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Remember, during the 2024 campaign, Trump expressed his long-held animus towards Haitians when he falsely accused them of eating people's pet dogs and cats. So then his immigration policy became much less popular even among Republicans.
What we have to watch for now is how the end of TPS plays politically, and a lot of that is going to depend on how fast the administration moves to deport these immigrants, legal immigrants. The bottom line is that the U.S. is no longer a welcoming country for immigrants, even legal immigrants. The administration is also talking about denaturalization, taking away citizenship. And that historically has been a very rarely used tool.
INSKEEP: NPR's Mara Liasson. Thanks for the insights.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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