(The Lion) — Haitians and Syrians holding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the U.S. need to apply for permanent status or go home, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief said following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling favoring the Trump administration.

The court ruled 6-3 Friday that the administration had the authority to terminate TPS for some 330,000 Haitians and Syrians and that courts have no jurisdiction to review the terminations.

“Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here underneath a permanent status or we’ll help you get back to your country,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

He offered departing foreigners a plane ticket back home, plus $2,100, to take care of settlement costs.

For Haitians, this represents more than 3.5 times the average annual wage for the lowest 70% of the country.

In the U.S., Haitian TPS holders have an average annual salary of around $72,000, according to the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

Black Americans, by contrast, had a median household income of $54,000 in 2023, according to data supplied by Pew Research.

“Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide short-term humanitarian relief for aliens who cannot safely return to their home countries,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority, noting in the case of Somalia, TPS has lasted 35 years. “Although designed to afford ‘temporary’ relief, TPS designations in practice have often lasted for decades.”

Haitians, for example, first received a TPS designation after the 2010 earthquake.

One critic of the termination of TPS status was so outraged by the court’s decision that he momentarily lost control of his English.

“It would be the largest ‘dedocumentization’ event of people in U.S. history,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, according to CNN.

Arulanantham, a professor at UCLA School of Law, was the attorney who argued the Syrian TPS case before the court.

Designed for temporary relief

The Trump administration has maintained TPS was designed to provide 18 months of relief under statute but became a de facto permanent residency program for hundreds of thousands of people who were never supposed to qualify for one.

Syria provides a powerful example of program abuse.

The country was designated for TPS in 2012 for an initial period of 18 months after the regime of Bashar al-Assad unleashed a campaign of torture, arbitrary executions and attacks on civilians that plunged the country into civil war.

Yet Syrian arrivals in the U.S. tapered off through 2017 but have almost doubled since 2022 after President Joe Biden opened U.S. borders.

When Assad fell from power in late 2024, the U.S. normalized relations with Syria’s new transitional government.

Still, TPS remained even as more than 1.2 million Syrians voluntarily returned home, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

When the Biden administration took office, approximately 411,000 were TPS beneficiaries. When he left, the number had increased to 1.4 million, according to government estimates.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, agreed with Alito that the courts did not have the statutory authority to override the president on TPS designations.

Thomas also noted the plaintiffs’ own logic was self-defeating if they were attempting to save the program by race or national origin.

If equal protection principles applied to immigration decisions the way they were arguing, Thomas said, then TPS itself would be unconstitutional because it gives preferential treatment to specific nationalities.

“If equal protection principles applied to immigration decisions, much of even our current immigration law would conflict with this Court’s modern equal protection doctrine,” Thomas said.

Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine went on CNN to plead with Trump to allow Haitians to stay in Ohio so they can take care of moms and dads.

“It’s Haitians who many times are taking care of your mom or your dad who has Alzheimer’s, taking care of family members who might be in a nursing home,” DeWine said. “And to say we’re going to pull all those out, it’s just not in our own self-interest.”

Statistics show Haitians are doing better than many of Ohio’s 1.8 million black residents, 112,000 of whom were born outside the U.S. This includes approximately 30,000 Haitians in central Ohio alone living under TPS.

In 2024, the unemployment rate for blacks was 7.9%.

The median household income for black Ohioans is $45,800 – $26,000 less than Haitian TPS holders nationwide.

Twenty-four percent of black Ohioans live below the poverty line, and young black Ohioans ages 20-24 are unemployed at 11.9%.

Mullin noted the TPS holders could have applied anytime for permanent status if they wanted to.

“The whole time these individuals have been here underneath the temporary protected status, they could have applied for a visa.”