LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on the Supreme Court's ruling about temporary protected status, we're joined by Megan Hauptman. She's one of the lawyers who litigated the TPS case with the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of about 6,000 Syrian refugees. And she's in studio with me now. Good morning, and thanks for being here.
MEGAN HAUPTMAN: Thanks so much for having me.
FADEL: So I want to start with what this decision has meant for your about 6,000 clients.
HAUPTMAN: Yeah. So our clients are Syrian TPS holders who've lived here lawfully, often for more than a decade. They're your neighbors, community members, people who've had children here, pursued careers, pursued education. They've really built their lives in the United States, under the understanding that Syria was not safe for them to return to. And all of a sudden, they are facing the possible imminent loss of their status overnight, going from being lawfully present with work authorization to essentially being rendered undocumented, and having to make really impossible decisions about whether to stay in a country that will afford them no protection or to return to a country that isn't safe to return them. And all of that implicates family separation, the loss of jobs and the ability to care for others. And it has ripple effects outside of just TPS holders, but also in the communities that they're an integral part of.
FADEL: I want to ask you about that because you talk about them having jobs, being integrated in their communities. And Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin talked about the administration's position on CNN's "State Of The Union" on Sunday, and this is what he had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STATE OF THE UNION")
MARKWAYNE MULLIN: What we want - and the president has made this very clear - those that are coming to this country legally, they need to be able to contribute to the United States, not be a burden on the taxpayers.
FADEL: A burden on the taxpayers. I mean, TPS was set up to let people live and work in the U.S. if they couldn't return safely to their home countries. Does what he's saying here match reality?
HAUPTMAN: No, because what the administration is doing is making it impossible for these people to continue to have work permits, to lawfully work in this country. It's actually making them - it's creating a new burden by stripping people of status, by stripping them of work authorization. And TPS holders, both Syrians and from many other nationalities, are often working in industries that are understaffed, that are actively looking to fill roles.
There's a lot of TPS holders who work in health care, elder care. There's also TPS holders working in the farmworker industries, meatpacking, industries that are already feeling the economic crunch as a result of the administration's immigration policies. And this decision does nothing to alleviate that stress. And certainly, it doesn't make it easier for people to continue to work if they no longer have permission to.
FADEL: Now, this case was about TPS for Haitian and Syrian nationals specifically. But what does the high court's decision say to you about the future of immigration more broadly in the U.S.?
HAUPTMAN: Yeah. So beyond Syrian and Haitian TPS holders, this decision green lights the administration's efforts to strip status from potentially up to 1.3 million TPS holders across different nationalities. And what the court said here is that even though there's a law, there's a TPS law that sets out a process and criteria for making TPS decisions, that even if the administration doesn't follow that law, even if they blatantly violate it, there's no accountability with the federal courts for those violations. And so it really makes it easier for the administration to go ahead and terminate TPS for really any reason that they want, with the knowledge that there won't be accountability.
FADEL: Megan Hauptman is one of the lawyers who argued the TPS case before the Supreme Court on behalf of Syrian refugees. Thank you so much for your time and your insights.
HAUPTMAN: Thank you so much.
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