On Thursday, the US supreme court authorized the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), facilitating the largest single assault on immigrants in contemporary United States history.

While the case concerned the 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian holders of this status, the decision could expose more than 1.3 million people to potential deportation to countries that the United States has recognized as unsafe.

This act is the cruelest component of a growing strategy in the Trump administration’s ethnic cleansing agenda, one that is increasingly being facilitated by a conservative supreme court – the cancelling of statuses that were once legal.

TPS became law in 1990, under George HW Bush, to fill a gap left by the narrow legal definition of asylum, which is limited to people who have a “well-founded fear of persecution” on the basis of “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion”.

People fleeing other dangers, such as those whose countries are embroiled in ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or pandemics, cannot secure asylum under this law. They also cannot be sent home, as the country by law cannot send people to their persecution or death – a principle called non-refoulement.

TPS, designated by country of origin and renewable for six, 12, or 18 months, offers its holders protection from deportation and work authorization, but not a pathway to residency.

However, due to rising environmental degradation, inequality and continued military belligerence (including by the United States), administration after administration has renewed these designations year after year: Haiti’s TPS has been........

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