Northwest lawmakers react after Supreme Court lets Trump end legal protections for Haitian, Syrian immigrants

WASHINGTON – Reactions from Northwest lawmakers split along party lines after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for Haitian and Syrian nationals, with implications for immigrants from more than a dozen other countries.

In a 6-3 decision, the court’s Republican-appointed justices overrode lower courts to let the Department of Homeland Security end temporary protected status, or TPS, for the roughly 330,000 Haitians and 3,800 Syrians who have been allowed to live and work in the United States under the program. Democrats denounced the decision while Republicans largely supported it, although some said they hope President Donald Trump will use his discretion and not deport all the affected people.

“It’s a common-sense ruling that temporary means temporary, and that if one president can use the law to let a group in, that the next president ought to be able to say that that was temporary status,” Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, said in a brief interview at the Capitol.

“With that being said, in the aftermath of the ruling, Haiti is a very dangerous place, and there are a lot of Haitians with temporary status in important industries like healthcare,” Baumgartner added. “It’s a common-sense decision by the court, but I hope the administration also uses common sense as it seeks to enforce the removal of the temporary protection in an orderly and thoughtful fashion.”

Congress created TPS through legislation in 1990 to give presidents the discretion to let immigrants live and work in the United States when war, famine and other conditions in their home country make it unsafe to return. In the 40 years since then-President Ronald Reagan signed the last major immigration reform bill into law in 1986, Democratic and Republican presidents have used the authority as part of the ad hoc U.S. immigration system, renewing TPS repeatedly as the protected immigrants have filled important roles in communities and the nation’s workforce.

“This should matter to all of us, and it just shows that we need to speak up, reach out to legislators to push for extension of TPS and then also to change our immigration policies as a nation,” said Luc Jasmin III, a Democrat running to represent the 3rd Legislative District in the Washington House of Representatives.

Jasmin’s father, Luc Jasmin Jr., is a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Haiti at age 16 and now leads the congregation at Maranatha Evangelical Church in East Central, a hub of Spokane’s Haitian community.

A total of 17 countries are currently designated for TPS, and the Trump administration has formally moved to end the protection for eight of them: Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Yemen, Ethiopia and Somalia. The current designation for Haiti began after a devastating earthquake killed about 300,000 people in the Caribbean nation in 2010, and Syria was designated amid the country’s civil war in 2012.

The Trump administration has argued that conditions in both countries no longer meet the conditions for TPS. While Syria has begun to emerge from its civil war since former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted at the end of 2024, Haiti has fallen deeper into violence and poverty since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement that the U.S. government “should not be forcing out potentially hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants who contribute so much to our communities.”

“Pushing out TPS holders will hurt everyone who knows and loves these hardworking people who call America home,” she said. “Should seniors lose beloved caregivers and should hospitals lose nurses and other critical support staff all to satisfy a hateful and irrational immigration policy being pushed by this administration?”

Murray noted that the House passed a bipartisan bill in April that would extend TPS for Haitians. The legislation has not passed the Republican-led Senate, where a 60-vote supermajority is required to overcome the filibuster rule.

One of the Republicans who voted for the House bill, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, wrote on X that about one third of Haitians with TPS work in healthcare, and he asked the Trump administration to “allow for an orderly process by which Haitian TPS holders can maintain their work authorization while their immigration cases are adjudicated over the next six months.”

In the United States’ patchwork of immigration laws, TPS holders may also qualify for other protections, such as asylum. But the Trump administration has moved to reduce the number of immigrants granted asylum, in part by firing more than 100 immigration judges.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican who represents central Washington, said Thursday that Haitians protected by TPS came to the United States under “legitimate circumstances” and “I’m very happy that we offer that kind of thing.” The dire conditions in Haiti should be considered, he added, but “temporary has to mean something, or we should change the program.”

Rep. Russ Fulcher, a Republican who represents North Idaho, said he supports the court’s decision and linked it to the millions of unauthorized immigrants who live in the country.

“If we can’t maintain some degree of control over managing that population, then we’re not doing our job to protect this country,” Fulcher said. “Now, coming up with the policy on who stays and who goes, that’s a different deal, and it’s got to be done case by case.”

Reporter Julia Pentasuglio contributed to this story.