WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court on Wednesday wrestled with the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disaster, hearing arguments that offer the latest test of how the justices will assess the legality of the president’s far-reaching crackdown.

Several conservative justices appeared to be leaning in favor of the Republican administration’s argument that the law limits what courts can do with a program known as temporary protected status, or TPS. The outcome could come down to how Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett vote.

The government is appealing lower court orders that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from immediately ending temporary protected status for people from Haiti and Syria. If the justices agree with President Donald Trump, authorities potentially could strip protections from up to 1.3 million people from 17 countries, exposing them to possible deportation.

The court has sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela as lawsuits continue to play out.

The Department of Justice argues that the homeland security secretary has the power to end the program, and that the law bars judges from questioning those decisions. “The kind of determination that is at issue here is just the sort of determination that lies kind of at the heartland of what has been traditionally entrusted to the political branches,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said.

Lawyers for about 350,000 migrants from Haiti and 6,000 from Syria say the government short-circuited the process and that judges can consider whether authorities followed all the steps laid out in the law.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, DHS has ended the protections people from 13 countries. Some who have lived and worked in the U.S. legally for more than a decade have lost jobs and housing in a matter of weeks, lawyers said. Returning to Haiti and Syria is out of the question for many people because those countries remain wracked with violence and instability, said Sejal Zota, co-founder and legal director of Just Futures Law.

“This really is life or death,” she said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.

The administration appealed to the high court after judges in New York and the District of Columbia agreed to delay the end of protections. One judge found that “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” likely played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians.

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, home to a large community of people with protected legal status.