They Don't Care About People Dying

The Supreme Court blessed the Trump agenda by stripping away protections for hundreds of thousands of refugees who now face deportation and deadly violence

Two Haitian human rights activists embrace outside the U.S. Supreme Court in March when the court agreed to hear the deportation case. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

This week newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk threatened Rep. Ro Khanna. “It’s time to sue the liar,” he posted. He also said the California congressman should be thrown in prison.

What was eating the thin-skinned, sociopathic Musk? Surely not the rising death count across the developing world caused by his reckless defunding of foreign aid, as detailed in a study by The Lancet medical journal.

Musk was angry that Khanna insisted this week that Musk should be held accountable for his actions. “They’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with SpaceX], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID,” Khanna said. “He needs to answer for that. He needs to be subpoenaed, he needs to face investigation.”

Most of the stories you may read on this will focus on the Musk-Khanna beef. But the real issue is that our broken body politic would permit an unelected man like Musk—so indifferent to human life—to access our government systems and destroy global aid programs which were successfully addressing global starvation and deadly disease. He backed up his efforts by saying—with lies and without evidence—that the recipient organizations were criminal and using taxpayer funds for money laundering.

And if Musk was wrong about his claims of fraud? “Nobody’s going to bat 1,000,” he laughed, standing in the Oval Office last year.

This sordid, deadly tale has been on my mind after learning that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday to strip away the protections that 350,000 Haitians and some 6,000 Syrians counted on to live and work in the U.S. without the threat of deportation to home countries facing violence and unstable conditions. This cruel decision now endangers all 1.3 million immigrants who rely on temporary protected status (TPS) in the U.S. (The court already ended protections for some 300,000 Venezuelans last October.)

“Simply put, the Supreme Court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths,” stated attorneys Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber, who represented Haitians before the court. “This decision will endanger Haitian TPS holders who fled their homeland in pursuit of what generations of immigrants yearned for when they made the painful decision to leave all they have known: to live in safety.”

This decision by the right-wing extremist Supreme Court is a follow-up to the demonizing racist propaganda promulgated by Donald Trump and JD Vance during the 2024 election. You remember the nonsense: that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating cats and dogs.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, an unusual Republican who defended the Haitains then, called the ruling now “a mistake.” He noted that over 10,000 Haitians in Ohio who “were working and contributing to our community and economy yesterday,” will now “be subject to immediate deportation.”

And sent back to what? “The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse. The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions. And, the economy is in shambles,” DeWine said.

Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and co-founder of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, said the ruling places thousands of families in immediate fear.

“Haiti is not safe, and everyone knows it,” Dorsainvil said. “The court’s ruling does not change the reality on the ground or the contributions we make here in the United States.”

But that is of no concern to Justice Samuel Alito or the five other justices determined to back Trump’s white supremacist agenda. Vulnerable refugees? A history of humanitarian protection for those in need? Nope, no concern of this Supreme Court. Maybe the refugees would have gotten a different outcome if they were Norwegian.

In her dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor said the majority “blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution,” even though the immigration system has been built by Congress to help protect immigrants seeking asylum.

Hear the words of Erika Pinheiro, the executive director of Al Otro Lado, which supports refugees, deportees and other migrants. This is from her statement released yesterday:

We believe that today’s ruling violates international law, as well as the express intent of Congress, which enshrined the rights and obligations of the Refugee Convention into U.S. federal law over 40 years ago. For decades, the United States has allowed individuals and families who are fleeing persecution, torture and death to ask for protection at U.S. borders and exercise their legal right to seek asylum… In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost.

There’s little doubt that the realities of global conflict and the climate crisis will continue to exacerbate fear, desperation and the need for residents to seek safer places to live. But the partisan and hostile Supreme Court—like Elon Musk, like Donald Trump—have made it clear that they could not care less about human rights or the suffering of others.

In April, on a discharge petition, the House passed a bill 224-204 directing the Department of Homeland Security to designate Haiti for temporary protected status. But the GOP-led Senate has been dragging its feet. Perhaps there will be a few Republicans who will respond to the pressure to act now, but I wouldn’t count on their compassion.

May we one day live in a country not run by sociopathic leaders. The November midterms are in 129 days.

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