“Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses  yearning to be free,

The wretced refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

by Emma Lazarus

That was then (1883). This is now (2026).

In 1990, Congress passed the Temporary Protected Status Program into law, giving the Homeland Security Department the authority to allow into the country citizens of other countries whose internal conditions would not enable their citizens to return safely to their home countries because of national disaster, and that law allowed those displaced citizens to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis (read, for example, Haiti in 2010 after its earthquake) or armed conflict (read Syria in 2012). A well meaning law, to be sure, on sync with the thoughts behind Emma Lazarus’ sonnet (of which the above lines are the second, and better known, half).

But the law wasn’t perfectly written (what law is?) and undoubtedly assumed good faith on the part of those who would be administering it. For example, law was not explicit on when such temporary shelter could be reversed. In case of beneficiaries from Syria and Haiti, we are now about 15 years after the initial designation, and once refugees are here for 15 years, dislodging them can be very painful. They have not only lived in this country for a decade and a half, they have married (sometimes marrying U.S. citizens), they have had children (all of whom born here are U.S. citizens), they have bought houses (payment for which depends upon their income), they have had occupations (sometimes being heavily relied upon by employers, customers and others), and they have become threads in the fabrics of their communities. Perhaps the law never contemplated TPS (as it is called) for such a long period; I don’t know.

The law gave discretion of the Department of Homeland Security not only to give TPS, but to withdraw it, and that is what the Trump administration, under former Secretary Kristi Noem decided to do. The law did two more things, as I understand it. It set forth procedural steps that the Secretary was to take to determine whether ending TPS was appropriate, and it provided that the decision of the Secretary was not reviewable by the Courts.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Homeland Security Secretary’s ruling as to the Haitians and the Syrians, right or wrong, humane or inhumane, was by law not reviewable by the courts. Period. The three dissenting liberal judges said that, while the decision was not reviewable, the Secretary was required to go through certain steps to inform his/her decision, and whether these steps were followed was reviewable.

I haven’t studied this case at all, so frankly I don’t know, as a matter of law, who was right. But I do know that the position taken by the Court is going to create havoc not for a small number of people, but a larger number, and that the havoc was not necessary.

The case before the Supreme Court involved citizens of Haiti and Syria. There are about 330,000 Haitians in the United States with TPS, and about 6,000 Syrians. But the same reasoning would presumably apply to citizens of other countries whose status under the program could change at any time. The estimates of the entire number of people in the United States with Temporary Protective Status is about 1,300,000, from 17 countries. The largest numbers are from Venezuela (over 600,000), Haiti, El Salvador and Ukraine.

Because so many TPS beneficiaries have established social ties over their years here, it is estimated that the 1,300,000 TPS holders live with approximately 900,000 American citizens (spouses and children for the most part). So, like the other actions of the Trump administration with regard to other immigrants (those who came here legally, and those who did not), many, many, many, many Americans are affected, with families broken up because of loss of a parent, or thrown into poverty because of lack of an earner. The ultimate effects are on the children.

It was Gerald Ford who said in 1974, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” He was of course speaking of Watergate and he was correct. But it may be worthwhile to see a little more of what he said: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over….Our Constitution works, our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. here the people rule. But there is a higher power, by whatever name we honor him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice, but mercy.”

I always liked the decency of Gerald Ford. His steady hand steadied the country at a time of crisis. Where is the Gerald Ford of 2026? We need to find him/her, because until we do……the nightmare continues.