The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and Syria to live and work legally in the United States while their home countries are in disarray.
Without these protections, known as Temporary Protected Status, 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians face potential deportation. The ruling is also likely to have implications for others with that status.
Congress created the T.P.S. program with bipartisan support in 1990 to provide limited legal status to people whose home countries are unsafe because of violence, natural disasters or other crises.
Haiti and Syria have for years been battered by such emergencies, and the people who now face potential deportation from the United States could be returned to them.
Here is a glimpse at what those people may soon face.
Haiti
The Caribbean nation of Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and among the poorest in the world. It has long struggled economically, its woes driven by foreign interventions, political instability, natural disasters, gang violence and historical French demands that the island make payments on an enormous debt.
Since the assassination of its last elected president, Jovenel Moïse, in July 2021, the country’s troubles have only grown more acute. Gangs have filled the power vacuum left by the weak authorities, using kidnappings, checkpoints and extortion to generate revenue and expand their control.
More than two dozen gangs rule a vast majority of the capital, Port-au-Prince, inflicting widespread violence and preventing commerce by blocking the free flow of goods, according to the United Nations. Gang violence has left more than 2,300 people dead and more than 1,100 injured so far this year, the United Nations said, with thousands more killed in the preceding years.
Earlier this month, U.N. monitors reported that gangs were also expanding into areas once considered relatively safe, forcing people who had taken in others displaced by violence to themselves seek refuge. The escalating violence has displaced 1.5 million Haitians, according to United Nations.
As of this April, more than half of Haiti’s population of nearly 12 million people were facing acute hunger and nearly 2 million facing emergency levels of hunger, according to the World Food Program.
Natural disasters have exacerbated the island’s struggles. In 2010, Haiti was devastated by an earthquake that killed an estimated 220,000 people, displaced about 1.5 million and destroyed the country’s infrastructure, little of which has since been rebuilt.
Hurricanes and more earthquakes have hit the nation in the years since, too, including a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people and was followed days later by a storm that brought flash floods and new damage.
Last year, the U.N. Security Council approved a multinational force to address the spiraling violence in the country. That group has been trickling in since spring, and about 5,500 personnel are expected to join the endeavor, aiming to curb the flow of arms and restore safety along with Haitian security forces.
“Let’s be clear: gangs have been terrorizing Haiti. Institutions have been weakened,” the U.N. chief, António Guterres, said during a visit to Haiti in June. “But the biggest disgrace is indifference, the indifference of a world that has looked away.”
Syria
After nearly 14 years of civil war, a push by Syrian rebels in December 2024 toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia. The end of the war brought change, including a new president: the former Syrian rebel commander who led the revolt, Ahmed al-Shara.
But Syria is still struggling as it tries to rebuild and recover, humanitarian groups say. Many parts of the country remain ravaged by the war, and a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated southern Turkey in 2023 also hit northern Syria. And after years of isolation and widespread corruption, Syria’s economy is still only starting to re-engage with the world.
“Syria faces a severe food crisis, the World Food Program reported in May, with more than 80 percent of Syrian families who “still cannot consistently meet their diverse, sufficient and nutritious food needs.”
About 1.6 million Syrians have returned to the country since the civil war’s end, and about two million internally displaced people have returned to their communities. They face significant challenges, including limited access to essential services, unemployment and instability in some areas, according to the United Nations.
“Humanitarian needs remain acute, displacement persists, and conditions for sustainable returns are still uneven across the country,” Indrika Ratwatte, the acting deputy U.N. relief chief, told the Security Council on Monday.
Nor has the fear of violence vanished. More than 1,700 people were killed, most from the Druse minority, during an explosion of sectarian violence in July 2025, according to a U.N. report released in March. Also that year, chaotic raids largely targeted the Alawite sect that Mr. al-Assad belongs to, killing around 1,400 people, most civilians, in another report’s estimate.
More recently, fighting this year between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has driven refugees from Lebanon into Syria.
