The US Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a victory in a 6-3 opinion Mullin v. Doe on June 25, based on the government’s arguments that federal agencies have the authority, without the need for judicial review, to end the temporary protected legal status of Haitians and Syrians living and working in the US under a program designed to provide safe harbor for at-risk aliens in their home countries.
Construction and labor groups say the decision could have real impacts for construction companies that have hired workers under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for years.
“The construction industry has long relied on TPS workers, many of whom have been legally employed in the industry for years,” Brian Turmail, vice president of association and industry image for the Associated General Contractors of America, said in an email: “Recent administrative changes to the program have jeopardized, for many of these workers, the ability to remain employed and other workers face the uncertainty of TPS.”
These developments compound the industry’s current challenges in finding workers for the projects, Turmail said. AGC has called for comprehensive immigration reform that would create additional legal pathways to help meet the industry’s future labor needs
The opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, and was joined by the conservative wing of the court: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Elena Kagain wrote the dissent, along with Sonya Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Removal of protections
The TPS program was established under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act in 1990 to provide safe harbor to foreign nationals at risk due to war, natural or environmental disasters, or extraordinary and extreme circumstances.
The program has been a target of the Trump administration as part of its broader immigration goals. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January 2025, directing Cabinet officials to ensure that TPS designations remain within the scope of the law and that the designation should be limited to meet legal requirements, but not extended beyond what is necessary.
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Since the executive order was signed, the US Department of Homeland Security has ended TPS protections for every state up for renewal, affecting 13 nationalities in total, including those from Ethiopia and Venezuela.
When then-Secretary Kristi Noem said in November 2025 that TPS status for Haitian citizens would end on February 3, Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a Haitian neuroscientist and PhD candidate, along with five other Haitians, sued the federal government. They argued that revoking TPS status for Haitians and Syrians was racially motivated. The federal district court in Washington, DC, stayed the TPS termination to allow the underlying legal challenge to play out.
A majority of the Supreme Court rejected this argument, stating, “One may oppose TPS and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race. And a person without racial prejudice may provide a very unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with TPS designations.”
Despite Trump’s negative statements about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio and elsewhere, they do not necessarily demonstrate racial discrimination, Alito said. “Whatever one may think of the quoted statements, they are insufficient to demonstrate that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”
In her dissent, joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kagan said that while the TPS program was not intended to grant indefinite legal status, “the law prevents the program from ending as it likely did here, without the necessary inquiries into the country’s conditions and, in the case of Haiti, with impermissible considerations based on race tainting the decision.” He added: “At this point, both groups of plaintiffs are asking for only one thing: that they be allowed to stay in this country while they continue to litigate their claims. For all the reasons given, they are entitled to this relief and instead should not be subjected to devastating and indeed life-threatening injuries.”
Jessica Bansal, TPS counsel for the National Workers’ Organizing Network, said in a statement that humanitarian protections will be stripped from “hundreds of thousands of immigrants, in flagrant violation of laws enacted by Congress.”
In addition to representing plaintiffs in Mullin v. Doe, Bansal represents the TPS National Alliance in litigation challenging the termination of YPS in Venezuela, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua.
