In an absolute blowout for the activist class, the Supreme Court has handed down a unanimous 9-0 decision confirming that words actually have meanings. In Sanchez v. Mayorkas, the Court ruled that migrants who sneaked into the country illegally can't use Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as a cheat code to bypass the legal immigration line and get green cards. The ruling is sending shockwaves through the corporate cheap-labor lobby and open-borders NGOs, but for anyone who still believes in the rule of law, it is a magnificent reality check.

The entire legal drama centered around a couple from El Salvador who snuck over the border in 1997, got TPS years later after some natural disasters back home, and then decided they wanted to adjust their status to permanent residents. Their lawyers came up with some peak clown-world logic, arguing that because TPS gives you "lawful status" as a nonimmigrant, it magically retcons your original illegal entry into a legal "admission." Essentially, they wanted the Court to play pretend and treat a border-hopper like they stood in line and got inspected at a port of entry.

Writing the opinion for the unanimous Court was none other than liberal darling Elena Kagan, who basically told the open-borders lobby to cope and seethe. Kagan noted that "status" and "admission" are entirely different concepts under Section 1255 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). You can have a temporary legal status, but if you were never inspected and admitted at the border, you didn't get "admitted." Period. The law says what it says, and even the most progressive justices on the bench couldn't stomach the mental gymnastics required to rewrite it.

The TPS program was whipped up by Congress back in 1990 as a temporary, humanitarian deal to let people stay if their home countries were hit by a hurricane or a civil war. But in classic administrative state fashion, "temporary" became permanent, and now we have over 400,000 people living here on perpetual temporary status. Activist lawyers have been trying to turn this temporary band-aid into a massive backdoor amnesty program, and the Supreme Court just slammed that door shut.

Before this ruling, some activist judges in the Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits were actually buying into this nonsense, allowing illegal entrants to get their green cards domestically. Meanwhile, the adult-in-the-room circuits (the Third, Fifth, and Eleventh) had correctly rejected this legal cope. By settling the split, the Supreme Court has restored sanity and standardized the law, making sure that illegal entry actually has consequences, no matter what part of the country you reside in.

The crying from the corporate lobby has already begun. Big Business loves cheap, compliant labor, and companies in construction, hospitality, and agriculture have been sponsoring these TPS workers for green cards to keep their labor costs down. Now, these employers are facing the "swift repercussions" of actually having to follow the law. If they want to sponsor these workers, those workers have to go back to their home countries and stand in the same line as everyone else, which is exactly how a fair system is supposed to work.

Of course, leaving the country triggers the statutory three- and ten-year re-entry bars established under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Progressive activists are losing their minds over this "catch-22," but it's actually just called consequences. If you bypass the legal entry system, you don't get to bypass the penalty for doing so. The law is designed to deter people from breaking the border in the first place.

At the end of the day, this 9-0 ruling is a massive black pill for the executive overreach fans who think they can use administrative tricks to rewrite immigration law. It proves that even the liberal justices are tired of activist lawyers trying to legislate from the bench. If the open-borders crowd wants to hand out green cards to everyone on TPS, they’re going to have to get off Twitter, go to Congress, and actually pass a law—which, given the current state of legislative gridlock, is a massive L for them.

Sources: Supreme Court of the United States, Opinion in Sanchez v. Mayorkas*, No. 20-315 (June 7, 2021) * U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Temporary Protected Status Overview (2021) * Congressional Research Service, "Temporary Protected Status: Overview and Current Issues" (Report RL31386) * Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-546