Supreme court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

TPS holders, union leaders and activists protest outside the supreme court in April. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images View image in fullscreen TPS holders, union leaders and activists protest outside the supreme court in April. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images Supreme court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’ Lawmakers and advocates condemn ‘disastrous’ decisions that allow Trump officials to strip away migrant protections Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to severely strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system. ‘Devastating’: lives of nurses and patients upended by Trump migrant crackdown Read more Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the decisions. “Today, Trump’s loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants’ internationally recognized human rights and advance an authoritarian, white-supremacist agenda at home,” said Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a Democrat. “The supreme court’s decisions put more than 350,000 TPS holders at risk of deportation and countless more asylum seekers’ lives in danger.” One of Thursday’s rulings from the supreme court stripped away temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were living and working legally in the US and were protected from deportation. The TPS policy allows immigrants from specific countries to live and work in the US without the threat of deportation, due to violent or unstable conditions in their countries. Despite the state department currently warning against traveling to Haiti or Syria, citing violence, Haitians and Syrians in the US on TPS are now vulnerable to deportation, even if they have applications for other forms of immigration status in progress. “Simply put, the supreme court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths,” said attorneys Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber in a statement, who represented Haitians before the supreme court in the TPS case. “This decision will endanger Haitian TPS holders who fled their homeland in pursuit of what generations of immigrants yearned for when they made the painful decision to leave all they have known: to live in safety.” A number of Democratic senators and representatives – and even one Republican – agreed, adding that the 6-3 ruling on TPS will place hundreds of thousands at risk. People with TPS have permission to live and work in the US because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deemed their home countries to be unsafe. The Trump administration has attempted to slash the program for various countries in i