President Donald Trump lost at the Supreme Court on his top goal of restricting birthright citizenship, but he has cracked down on immigration through hundreds of policy changes that have affected millions of people – changes that have largely been supported by federal courts.
Key decisions in the closing weeks of the Supreme Court’s term confirmed three Trump policies. One allowed him to end a humanitarian program for Haitians and Syrians living temporarily in the country. Another allowed him to turn away refugees seeking asylum at the border. A third allowed more scrutiny of green-card holders returning from abroad.
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Although immigration law experts said Trump’s loss on birthright citizenship was expected, they said the issue’s constitutional importance outweighed the administration’s victories in other immigration cases. Trump sought to limit the long-standing constitutional principle – enshrined in the 14th Amendment in 1868 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898 – that those born in the United States are citizens.
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The biggest immediate impact of the recent Supreme Court decisions hits immigrants who have work permits and protection from deportation under a program called Temporary Protected Status because of dangerous conditions in their home countries.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion June 25 for a 6-3 majority barred judicial review of administration actions governing the TPS program.
The decision immediately put 350,000 Haitians and Syrians at risk of losing work permits and being deported if they don’t have some other legal status that would allow them to stay. All told, the administration has proposed to end the protected status for 1.3 million people from a total of 13 countries.
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Alito wrote another decision June 25 for a 6-3 majority that allowed the administration to turn back refugees at the border. Refugees can apply for asylum once in the country, but the decision allowed the government to prevent their entry.
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Another recent case made it riskier for legal permanent residents, also known as green-card holders, to travel abroad.
The case focused on Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen and green-card holder, who was charged with selling nearly $300,000 in counterfeit shorts before returning from a 2012 trip. He was “paroled” into the country, which meant that he could enter but wasn’t considered formally admitted. Immigration officials began deportation proceedings after his guilty plea a year later.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a decision for a 6-3 majority on June 23 that made it easier for immigration officials to deny reentry to green-card holders because Lau “had committed a crime involving moral turpitude before attempting to reenter the country.”
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Trump signaled his priority of limiting birthright citizenship by signing an executive order on the first day of his second term. He underlined his interest by becoming the first sitting president to attend a Supreme Court argument when the justices heard the birthright case this spring.
Trump argued that the amendment was intended for the children of slaves and not tourists or undocumented immigrants.
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The Supreme Court has sided with Trump in a number of emergency appeals, although those are early decisions in cases that haven’t been fully argued yet. The emergency docket, nicknamed the shadow docket, offers a venue for a quick answer about whether the government can continue a policy while a challenge is litigated.
About one-third of the 37 emergency applications during Trump’s second term through June 25 involved immigration issues, according to tracking by Ballotpedia.org.
Even before the TPS decision June 25, the high court earlier allowed the administration in October to move forward with plans to end deportation protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the program. The cases covering Haitians and Syrians fully fleshed out the court’s position on TPS.
Another challenge to Trump policies focused on deportations to countries where migrants had never been, such as South Sudan or Libya. The Supreme Court paused a lower court’s block on the removals while the case is litigated.
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Another emergency case focused on Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to assist immigration enforcement.
In October 2025, Trump federalized the National Guard in Texas and Illinois, and sent troops to Chicago to assist immigration enforcement. As Illinois fought back, a federal judge blocked the move. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump could federalize the troops but not deploy them.
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Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to speed the deportation of Venezuelans he accused of being members of the crime gang Tren de Aragua, which he labeled a terrorist organization. But he faced legal challenges almost immediately.
Three cases reached the Supreme Court under emergency requests to halt deportation flights. The high court temporarily blocked the flights in May 2025 while the cases are litigated. But the court also said the people facing deportation must pursue their cases individually where they are being held, under what are called habeas petitions, rather than collectively, under what is called a class action.
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One of the most contentious among the emergency decisions approved is what became known as “Kavanaugh stops.”
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles, several people filed a lawsuit in July 2025 alleging authorities questioned them without justification.
The Supreme Court lifted a block that a lower court placed on the stops. As part of a 6-3 majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that immigration officers make brief investigative stops to question the immigration status of people waiting for day jobs; people who work in construction, landscaping or agriculture that often don’t require paperwork; or people who don’t speak English.
Kavanaugh wrote that “the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.”
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Yale-Loehr, the retired Cornell professor, said the Trump administration changed more than 700 immigration policies with a “striking” scope.
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The post Trump’s Immigration Wins Will Affect Millions Despite Birthright Loss appeared first on American Renaissance.
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