ANALYSIS: TPS for Haiti and Syria — Noem’s Lie, Which the Courts Have Just Exposed

Maxime Marquette

2026-06-24 13:09:27

The five plaintiffs whom Noem called “leeches” and “killers”

The case Miot v. Noem (No. 25-cv-02471-ACR, D.D.C.) is named after Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist specializing in Alzheimer’s disease research. He is joined by Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank; Marlene Gail Noble, a toxicology lab assistant; Marica Merline Laguerre, an economics student; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse. These five individuals embody what the TPS protects: established lives and real contributions to the U.S. economy and society.

Federal Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did not mince words in her 83-page order issued on February 2, 2026: in her view, it was “highly likely” that Noem had predetermined her decision due to “hostility toward non-white immigrants.” She noted that three days after announcing the end of Haitian TPS, Noem had posted on social media a call to ban travel from Haiti and from “every damn country that floods our nation with killers, leeches, and welfare recipients”—her exact words, as quoted in the ruling.

The Timeline of an Orchestrated Termination

The process of dismantling Haitian TPS unfolded in three acts. In February 2025, Noem shortened the extension from 18 to 12 months—a “partial vacatur” deemed illegal by the 9th Circuit. On July 1, 2025, she published a decision in the Federal Register terminating TPS effective September 2, 2025: it is in this publication that the lie regarding the State Department’s consultation is set in black and white. Legal challenges temporarily blocked the effect of this decision. On November 28, 2025, she launched a third attempt, setting the end of TPS for February 3, 2026. Another federal court also halted this decision.

At every stage, the Trump administration claims to be acting in accordance with the law. At every stage, the courts find serious grounds to doubt this. And now, internal documents reveal that the first real building block of this legal structure—the July 1, 2025, publication—is based on a factually false assertion.

What strikes me about this sequence of events is the methodology. We’re not talking about a mistake, a bureaucratic oversight, or an interagency misunderstanding. We’re talking about a decision that was made, followed by an official document drafted to make it appear that the legal steps had been followed—even though an internal email, written two days earlier, proves the opposite. This is the engineering of administrative deception.

The Federal Register Lie: What the Emails Actually Reveal

The State Department’s “Phantom” Consultation

U.S. law is clear: before any decision is made regarding a country’s TPS status, DHS must assess conditions in that country and consult with the State Department. This is not an optional formality—it is a statutory requirement enshrined in the 1990 law. Yet the Federal Register of July 1, 2025, stated unequivocally: the secretary had made her decision “after reviewing conditions in the country and consulting with relevant U.S. government agencies.” This phrasing is the legal key. It validates the decision.

The emails obtained through discovery tell a different story. An initial internal message, dated two days before the announcement, shows that a DHS official acknowledged that consultation with the State Department had not yet taken place. A second email, even more damning, explicitly stated that the secretary had decided to “terminate Haiti’s TPS without” having received any information on conditions in the country from the Department of State (DOS). According to the motion to quash filed with the Supreme Court, these elements prove that “the July 1 notice misrepresented whether the State Department had been consulted.”

The Political Appointee vs. the Career Experts

The other explosive revelation in the documents concerns the internal dynamics of the DHS. Career experts—permanent, non-political civil servants whose job has been to analyze country conditions for decades—had recommended an automatic extension of Haiti’s TPS. That was the conclusion their analyses of conditions on the ground at the time led them to draw. That is what the law is supposed to produce: a decision based on the facts.

But at the eleventh hour, a political appointee—whose name has not been made public—overturned this recommendation with an unusual verbal directive, forcing officials to issue a termination decision regardless of conditions in the country. The documents also confirm that internal memos described the claims contained in the notice as “allegations without empirical support” that staff members had been “forced” to include in the official text. The Supreme Court itself had access to these previously filed internal documents—but it is the new evidence uncovered through discovery that paints the full picture.

I want us to grasp what this means: career civil servants—professionals whose sole job is to analyze the reality of humanitarian conditions—were verbally ordered to put conclusions on official paper that contradicted their own analysis. And they obeyed. We can understand them—we don’t know what they were up against. But this paints a picture of an administration that does not seek the truth. It fabricates it.

The Syrian parallel: same formula, same lie

Post-Assad Syria Follows the Same Pattern of Termination

What the documents reveal does not apply solely to Haiti. The Syrian case follows exactly the same pattern. In September 2025, nine months after the fall of the Assad regime, Noem announced the termination of Syrian TPS, effective November 21, 2025. Syrian nationals filed a lawsuit in a federal court in New York. They cited the same grounds: the decision was made without consulting the relevant agencies and without regard for the actual conditions in Syria. And, as with Haiti, they raised the constitutional argument: the decision was motivated, at least in part, by racial, ethnic, and national animus.

Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the District of New York suspended the termination of Syrian TPS in November 2025. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit refused to lift this injunction. It is the government’s position—argued by Solicitor General John Sauer before the Supreme Court—that sums it all up: the secretary had stated that she had consulted with other agencies—and the law does not specify any requirement regarding the degree of consultation needed. But what the new Haitian documents reveal is that even that statement was false.

The 6,100 Syrians and the Consolidation of the Two Cases

The Supreme Court has consolidated the two cases—Miot v. Noem (Haiti) and Mullin v. Doe (Syria)—for oral arguments on April 29, 2026. The stakes extend beyond these two countries: the entire legal framework governing TPS is at stake, with implications for more than 1.3 million people from 17 countries. For Syria specifically, the termination of TPS would affect approximately 6,100 TPS holders and 800 applicants—people who fled a regime that gassed its own citizens and who now face the threat of deportation to a country in a precarious state of reconstruction after decades of dictatorship and civil war.

During the oral arguments, the liberal justices vigorously pressed the Solicitor General on the issue of the State Department’s consultation. The administration’s response—that the secretary had stated she had consulted with the department and that this was sufficient—rang hollow even before the revelations of June 16. It now sounds like an indirect admission.

Syria is a particularly cruel case. We’re talking about people who fled a dictatorship supported by Russia and Iran—two of the worst regimes on the planet—and who built a life for themselves in the United States while their country was burning. Welcoming them was an act consistent with Western values. To deport them now, without even following due process, is to betray those values twice over.

Discriminatory intent: what the courts consider to be “substantially probable”

Judge Reyes and the Portrait of a Predetermined Decision

The concept of discriminatory animus lies at the heart of the Haitian plaintiffs’ constitutional argument. It refers to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the federal government from acting on the basis of race or national origin. To demonstrate discriminatory animus, courts examine the public statements of decision-makers, the context of the decisions, and discrepancies between the official justification and the actual facts.

Judge Ana Reyes ruled that it was “highly likely” that Noem had predetermined her decision due to hostility toward non-white immigrants. She noted in particular that, at the time of the announcement, Noem had finalized every TPS designation submitted to her—twelve countries, twelve terminations. She cited Noem’s remarks about “cursed” countries that are “flooding” the United States, and the fact that the secretary did not have “the facts on her side” and had “ignored them.” Judge Mendoza of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was even more direct: he concluded that there was “abundant evidence of racial and national-origin animus” in Noem’s decisions.

Trump, Springfield, and the Ducks and Cats—The Political Origin of the Animus

This animus does not arise in a vacuum of administrative action. During the September 2024 presidential debate, Trump spread a grotesque—and completely false—rumor claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets. This claim, immediately denied by local authorities, was nonetheless shared thousands of times, planting a dehumanizing image of Haitians in the minds of a segment of the American electorate. It is this political context—and not merely the text of the law—that the plaintiffs’ attorneys asked the courts to take into account.

The administration countered that these statements were comments “taken out of context,” dating back to “other years,” and that there was no direct link to the secretary’s decisions. But when you add up Noem’s public sarcasm, the list of countries—exclusively those with Black, Latino, or Muslim majorities—whose TPS has been terminated, the experts’ ignored recommendation, and now the lie documented in the Federal Register—the whole picture is one that the courts find difficult to characterize as anything other than discriminatory.

I understand the desire to separate policy from the administration. But there comes a point where the consistency of behavior becomes evidence in and of itself. Twelve countries, twelve terminations. Zero exceptions. All with non-white majorities. The law speaks of “evidence from the totality of the circumstances.” The context, here, is overwhelming.

The ACLU and the plaintiffs: “The Supreme Court must not be complicit”

The Motion to Dismiss: A Bold Legal Gamble

On June 16, 2026, the plaintiffs in Miot v. Noem filed a particularly bold motion with the Supreme Court: they asked the Court to dismiss the government’s petition as having been granted imprudently—which would mean that the Court acknowledges having accepted the case too early, before all the relevant facts were known. Alternatively, they are requesting that the case be remanded to the trial court so that the new evidence can be considered. All of this came just days before a ruling that, in all likelihood, had already been drafted.

The motion cites the new documents as proving that “the new facts strike at the heart of the plaintiffs’ claims” and constitute “evidence that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was a predetermined outcome motivated by discriminatory animus.” This wording is crucial: it directly links the documented administrative falsehood to the constitutional argument of animus. This is no longer a theory—it is, according to the lawyers, a documentary demonstration.

Lawyers’ Statements: “We Can’t Let This Slide”

Emi MacLean, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California representing the plaintiffs in NTPSA v. Noem, stated: “It should matter that former Secretary Noem lied. The Trump administration violated the law and then asked the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp its illegal actions. The Supreme Court must not be complicit. Checks and balances exist for a reason, and the government’s actions here demonstrate exactly why the government must not be granted unlimited discretion.” Strong, measured words—yet ones that carry absolutely explosive weight in the context of a case pending before the nation’s highest court.

Jessica Bansal, an attorney for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, was just as direct: “It would be blatantly reckless to strip 350,000 Haitian immigrants of their legal immigration status based on a lie. What remains to be seen is who will stop it. The government says the courts lack the authority to stop even an illegal termination of TPS. If the Supreme Court were to accept this radical position, it will be up to Congress and the people to prevent this tragedy.” This last sentence sounds like a warning: if the institutions give in, democracy itself will be held accountable.

What strikes me about Jessica Bansal’s statement is its desperate lucidity. She doesn’t say, “Justice will prevail.” She says: if the Supreme Court gives in, everything rests on Congress and the citizens. It is a public acknowledgment that institutional safeguards are fragile. It is telling the unvarnished truth. And it is more courageous than any triumphant rhetoric.

The Voices of TPS Holders: Humanizing the Numbers

A.A.: “There is no safety or future for me in Haiti”

Behind the statistics and legal proceedings are real people. A.A.—identified only by his initials in court documents—is one of the plaintiffs in NTPSA v. Noem. His statement, sober and heart-wrenching, deserves to be quoted in full: “It saddens me that the U.S. government distorts the truth about conditions in Haiti so it can deport people like me. I’ve been here since I was a child, and there is no safety or future for me in Haiti right now. My country is in a deeper crisis than ever before.”

That single sentence—“I’ve been here since I was a child”—alone sums up the moral absurdity of the situation. People are being asked to “return” to a country they have never truly known as adults, where they often do not speak the local language, where there is no housing, no jobs, no reliable medical infrastructure—and where the U.S. State Department itself advises all U.S. citizens against travel due to the highest level of risk.

Jose Palma and the TPS Alliance: People Who Played by the Rules

Jose Palma, coordinator of the National TPS Alliance and lead plaintiff in NTPSA v. Noem, articulated what many feel is a fundamental betrayal: “Haitian TPS holders have followed all the rules. Like all TPS holders, they are mothers and fathers, friends, and neighbors. Many have been living here legally for more than 15 years. Their contributions to our economy and culture enrich us all. They deserve better than this.”

What is at stake in this case is precisely this issue of the implicit social contract: hundreds of thousands of people have registered, paid their taxes, complied with administrative requirements, and renewed their status regularly—confident that the U.S. government would abide by its own rules. To learn that the decision to deport them was based not only on a questionable assessment but on a lie documented in the Official Journal of the United States is a breach of such gravity that it is difficult to measure.

I often think about this paradox: these people followed the rules of the game—precisely the ones that advocates of “legal and orderly” immigration claim to want. And yet they are the ones being targeted for deportation. Meanwhile, the administration that proclaims the rule of law publishes falsehoods in its own Official Gazette. Someone needs to point out the irony.

The First Trump Administration: A Precedent That Sheds Light on the Present

PBS and the Rewritten State Conclusions

The revelations from June 2026 did not come out of nowhere. They are part of a pattern that has been documented since Trump’s first term. A PBS investigation had revealed that Trump’s political appointees had rewritten or edited State Department analyses regarding conditions in countries designated for TPS—to align them with the predetermined decision to terminate those protections rather than with the reality on the ground. This is therefore not an isolated incident: it is a pattern.

When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed Noem’s decisions, it too concluded that she had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and that her actions exceeded the authority granted to her by law. These successive court rulings paint a consistent picture: a secretary who considers her own political will sufficient to override legal requirements—and an administration that encourages her to do so.

The pattern across the twelve countries: a policy, not case-by-case decisions

It is hard not to see a systemic strategy when one observes that Noem has terminated TPS for every country brought before her—twelve countries, twelve terminations, without exception. Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Syria, Yemen… The list is long and consists almost entirely of countries with non-white majorities. Some—such as Ukraine—have had their TPS terminated despite an active war on their soil supported by adversaries of the West.

This uniformity of treatment is precisely what Judge Reyes characterized as evidence of predetermined reasoning rather than a case-by-case evaluation as required by law. The law does not prohibit terminating TPS—it mandates a rigorous evaluation and consultation. It is exactly this evaluation and consultation that the documents reveal did not take place.

Twelve countries, twelve terminations. I am not a lawyer. But even as a political columnist, this statistic strikes me as damning. The law requires an individual analysis of conditions on a country-by-country basis. An average score of 1,000 in favor of termination is, statistically speaking, the hallmark of a policy—not an assessment. And a policy based on anything other than facts is what the courts call “arbitrary and capricious.” Or worse.

The Supreme Court Faces the "Truth Injunctions"

Liberal Justices and Pressure on the State Department’s Consultation

During the oral arguments on April 29, 2026, the liberal justices of the Supreme Court vigorously questioned Solicitor General John Sauer on the substance of the consultation with the State Department. One of the central issues: Does a mere superficial exchange of emails constitute a “consultation” within the meaning of the 1990 law? District Judge Reyes had already concluded, in the Haiti case, that DHS had relied on a single, brief email exchange with a State Department official—a far cry from the substantive consultation that Congress had envisioned when enacting the law.

But the government maintains its position: the Secretary stated that she had consulted; the law does not require a minimum level of consultation; and the courts lack the authority to interfere with decisions made by the Secretary of Homeland Security. This is the “zero judicial review” argument—a position that even some conservative judges seemed to find excessive during the hearings.

The ruling expected “by the end of June 2026” and its global implications

The ruling in Miot v. Noem was expected by the end of June 2026—which means that when the documents revealing the lie were made public on June 16, the decision was most likely already drafted, or even already voted on by the full court. The motion to remand filed by the plaintiffs is therefore a risky gamble: to persuade a Court whose conservative majority has already shown a strong tendency to support the administration on immigration matters to reverse its own decision—or at least to postpone it.

The implications extend far beyond Haiti and Syria. If the Supreme Court upholds the government’s position—that its statements in the Federal Register need not be true, and that the courts cannot verify them—the very principle of the administrative rule of law would be profoundly eroded. This would mean that any future administration could pursue any policy under the guise of fictitious procedures, without any real judicial oversight.

This is where Trump becomes a problem that transcends Trump himself. If the Court upholds the idea that a secretary can publish anything in the Federal Register without being held accountable, a lasting institutional precedent will have been set. The next ones to take advantage of it may not be Republicans. That is the danger of institutions: what we accept for our own, we cannot deny to others.

The DHS in Court: When New Evidence Undermines the Official Narrative

The discovery process: the legal weapon the administration sought to avoid

One of the Trump administration’s most persistent arguments in TPS cases is that the Secretary of Homeland Security’s decisions on TPS are not subject to judicial review. Citing the supremacy of the executive branch and invoking the language of the 1990 law, the administration argued that courts could neither question the rationale behind these decisions nor allow plaintiffs to conduct discovery—that is, to obtain internal documents through the judicial process.

It was precisely because a trial court authorized discovery in NTPSA v. Noem that the damning emails came to light. The proceedings had been conducted in parallel with the case before the Supreme Court—and their results caught up with the case at the last minute. According to attorney Jessica Bansal, there is likely “much worse to come” if discovery is allowed to continue. What the administration feared is exactly what happened: exposure.

Emails as Evidence of Institutional Bad Faith

The probative value of emails in administrative cases is well established in U.S. law. An internal memo that contradicts an official statement is evidence of bad faith—in administrative law, this can constitute sufficient grounds to overturn a decision under the APA. But in this case, the implications are even broader: it is a document published in the Federal Register—the most official document in the United States—that is directly contradicted by internal communications.

The petition for certiorari filed with the Supreme Court emphasizes that this evidence was not available at the time the Court agreed to hear the case. This is the very definition of grounds for reconsideration: new, substantial factual evidence that alters the analysis of the legality of the contested decision. The question is whether nine justices—five of whom were appointed by Republican presidents—will be willing to face the reality of what these documents reveal.

Institutions do not defend themselves on their own. They are defended because individuals—judges, lawyers, and defiant civil servants—choose to stand their ground. These emails exist because someone, somewhere within DHS, put them in writing rather than letting the fiction take hold without a trace. This is a form of silent resistance that I refuse to overlook.

Noem, Trump, and the Institutions: A Necessary Evil and Its Limits

Trump as a Deliberate Disruptor of the Liberal Order

We must be honest about Trump’s role in the geopolitical equation of 2026. On China, on Iran, on the pressure exerted on NATO to increase defense budgets, on deterrence against the Russian-Iranian axis—there is a tough, pragmatic, and at times effective logic, even if the methods are brutal. The West needed a wake-up call regarding its strategic naivety. On some of these issues, Trump’s firmness has produced results that more conventional administrations had not dared to impose.

But there is a line. That line is the one drawn by institutions—the mechanisms of oversight, transparency, and legitimacy that distinguish a liberal democracy from an authoritarian regime. When a secretary publishes a lie in the Official Gazette of the world’s leading democracy to justify the deportation of 350,000 people, she does not strengthen the West—she erodes it from within. She gives authoritarian regimes the best possible argument against democracy: “Look, they lie, too.”

Institutional Safeguards: Why They Still Matter

What is fascinating—and reassuring, to a certain extent—about this case is that the checks and balances partially worked. Career civil servants wrote emails contradicting the decisions of their political superiors. Lawyers secured the discovery of documents. Federal judges repeatedly dared to challenge the administration. The ACLU, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and the UCLA School of Law coordinated a legal strategy that brought the damning documents all the way to the steps of the Supreme Court.

That’s why institutions matter. Not because they’re perfect—they aren’t. Not because they always prevent abuses—they don’t. But because, when they work, they produce exactly what we’re seeing here: emails that reveal the truth, judges who read those emails, and a case that forces the debate at the highest level. It’s imperfect. It’s slow. It’s sometimes frustrating. But it’s what we have, and it’s better than the alternative.

I sometimes struggle with Trump’s unconditional defenders who reject any criticism of his administration’s actions in the name of “fighting the deep state.” I understand the frustration with a bureaucracy that can block legitimate political change. But what these emails reveal isn’t the Deep State sabotaging things. They show career civil servants doing their jobs according to the law—and a political appointee who bypassed them. The Deep State, in this story, is the lie in the Federal Register.

The “Do Not Travel” advisory: The government contradicts itself

Level 4: The State Department knows that Haiti is dangerous

One of the most striking contradictions in this case is the following: while the DHS claimed that conditions in Haiti had improved enough to justify the return of 350,000 people, the U.S. State Department maintains a Level 4 travel advisory—“Do Not Travel”—for Haiti. This is the highest alert level, defined as indicating an increased likelihood of life-threatening risks. The advisory explicitly states: “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnappings, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”

This is not a trivial administrative formality. It is the U.S. government’s official position on security in Haiti—the very same security that DHS claimed to have assessed favorably. The absurdity of the situation is complete: one branch of the federal government is telling its own citizens under no circumstances to go to Haiti, while another branch is deporting people to that very same country. And now we learn that the branch carrying out the deportations hadn’t even consulted the other branch before doing so.

Haiti in 2025–2026: The Reality the Federal Register Denies

On-the-ground data on Haiti in 2025–2026 is indisputable. Gangs control between 80 and 85 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to United Nations estimates. More than 1.4 million people are internally displaced. Infant mortality remains among the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Hospitals are operating at reduced capacity—if at all. The authorized multinational force—the argument Noem used to justify improved conditions—is struggling to deploy effectively. A.A., the Haitian complainant, says as much: “My country is in a deeper crisis than ever before.”

This context makes the administrative falsehood all the more serious. This is not a bona fide disagreement over an ambiguous situation. It is a claim that conditions have improved in a country that the entire international community—including the State Department of the same government—considers one of the most dangerous in the world. This administrative fiction has real-world consequences: human beings being deported to a hellish place that their own government advises its citizens to avoid.

There is something deeply perverse about the image of an administration that issues a “Do Not Travel” advisory for its own citizens while telling hundreds of thousands of others that it is safe enough to return there. I don’t believe that everyone who supports this policy has grasped the full extent of this paradox. Perhaps they should read it aloud, just once.

The Challenges Facing the West and the Consistency of Democratic Values

When Democracies Fail to Live Up to Their Own Standards

The West derives its legitimacy—geopolitical, moral, and cultural—from its commitment to certain fundamental principles: the rule of law, administrative transparency, and the protection of fundamental rights. These principles are not mere ideological embellishments. They are the reason why millions of people around the world, fleeing corrupt or authoritarian regimes, turn to liberal democracies. Every time a liberal democracy betrays these principles, it provides ammunition to those who claim that democracy is nothing more than a facade.

What is at stake in the Miot v. Noem case is not simply a matter of U.S. immigration policy. It is a matter of democratic credibility. Russia, China, Iran—the West’s structural adversaries—feed off every failure of the rule of law in America or Europe to fuel their narrative: “Look, their democracy is just as corrupt as our regimes.” Publishing a lie in the Federal Register to deport hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people is handing them that argument on a silver platter.

The Supreme Court as the Last Line of Defense or the Final Surrender

The ball is now in the U.S. Supreme Court’s court. Either it takes the new evidence into account—and recognizes that the government cannot lie in its own official documents without legal consequences. Or it upholds the administration’s position—and sends a lasting message: statements in the Federal Register are not subject to judicial review, and the courts have no say in TPS decisions, even those tainted by lies.

In the first case, American institutions demonstrate their resilience. In the second, we enter a realm where executive arbitrariness is constitutionally protected—which is precisely what the West’s adversaries define as the standard of governance. The West must remain the center of the world, not because it is perfect, but because it is capable of self-correction. That correction must take place now.

I often say that the West is worth defending. I still believe that. But defending the West does not mean defending every decision made by every Western government. It means defending the principles that make the West something different—and better—than its adversaries. Truth in official documents. Consultation before action. Judicial oversight of the executive branch. That is what the West is all about. Not a secretary who lies in the Federal Register.

Conclusion: When State Lies Clash with Institutional Memory

The Importance of Documentary Evidence in American Legal History

American legal history is marked by moments when internal documents have changed the course of events. From the Pentagon Papers to Watergate, from CIA files on surveillance programs to the Bush administration’s emails on “enhanced interrogation techniques,” documentary truth has a unique quality in a democracy: it does not disappear. It waits. And when the judicial process brings it to light, it speaks with a clarity that political denials cannot erase.

The DHS emails revealing that Kristi Noem had made the decision to terminate Haitian TPS without consulting the State Department—even as she claimed the opposite in the Federal Register—possess this same quality. They are there. They are dated. They are signed. And they prove that the legal formula intended to authenticate the decision was an administrative fiction. This is not an interpretation. It is a documented fact.

What the courts can still do—and what they cannot undo

Whatever the Supreme Court’s decision may be, certain things are now etched into the historical record. That DHS published a false statement in the Federal Register. That career experts were bypassed by a political appointee to produce a predetermined result. That more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians were subjected to the threat of deportation based on a fraudulent administrative process. And that the American justice system—imperfect, slow, and contested—has nonetheless shed the light necessary for these facts to come to light.

The real question is not just what the Supreme Court does with this evidence. It is what American society—and the West as a whole—decides to do about the fact that an administration has chosen state-sanctioned lies as a tool of immigration policy. Institutions can still set things right. But the will to see, to name, to resist—that belongs to the citizens.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist