The US is sending Syrian asylees back. Syria isn’t ready

(Diana Rayes – Atlantic Council) The decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrian asylees was handed down on First Street, Washington, DC, but it will be felt in Damascus, Beirut, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and far beyond. On June 25, the US Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s decision to terminate TPS programs for thousands of Syrians and several hundred thousand Haitians living in the US under humanitarian protection. Now, over six thousand Syrian asylees in the United States are forced to face a return to Syria, a homeland that many of them no longer recognize. “It feels like we are being besieged,” one Syrian asylee affected by the decision, who asked not to be named due to the uncertain legal situation, told me. “You cannot get any other visa processed. Everything is in limbo”. Syria continues to be a fragile state with over 15.6 million in need of humanitarian assistance due to decades of authoritarian rule under the Assad regime, compounded by a decade-and-a-half-long conflict, which concluded with dictator Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December 2024. Syrians living in the US under TPS comprise small fraction of the 12.5 million Syrians estimated to be displaced around the world—over half of Syria’s pre-war population. But the Supreme Court decision carries implications for this wider group, too. It sets a precedent for Syrian asylum-seekers and refugees in other major host countries, including Germany, Austria, France, and Canada, and signals to those governments that similar measures are permissible, despite the fact that Syria is not close to ready for the diaspora to come home. – The US is sending Syrian asylees back. Syria isn’t ready. – Atlantic Council