Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. rode to the rescue of illegal immigrant Dreamers six years ago by ruling that President Trump’s attempt to roll back the Obama-era DACA program broke the rules.

     Mr. Trump will be back at the Supreme Court with another case asking the justices to bless his attempt to curtail Temporary Protected Status, another program that grants migrants protection from deportation.  President Biden used the Temporary Protected Status program to shield more than 1 million migrants from deportation. Mr. Trump’s team has been pushing to end the status for more than a dozen countries, making those migrants once again eligible for deportation.  The rule of law is in the Constitution.

     The justices will hear case involving attempts to end the protected status for Haiti, which covers about 350,000 people, and Syria, which covers about 6,000.  Lower courts ruled that in both cases, the Homeland Security Department violated the law by ending protections without giving full consideration to the chaos in those countries. Mr. Trump wants the justices to let him proceed. The administration argues that the courts shouldn’t second-guess the president on these sorts of decisions. It says they are deeply tied to the president’s foreign policy powers and that the law gives the administration wide discretion to decide which countries are covered by the program.

     “Policy arguments cannot trump statutory text,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in his final brief before argument, filed.  The case is the latest in a string of Trump immigration moves to reach the high court during his two terms in office.  In 2018, the justices delivered a win to the president. Chief Justice Roberts penned the majority opinion, which upheld Mr. Trump’s travel ban on largely Muslim nations. Brushing aside complaints of racism, the chief justice said Congress gave the president wide-ranging powers to exclude categories of migrants at the border.

     Two years later, though, the chief justice ruled against the president on his attempt to wind down Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.  He ruled that Mr. Trump likely had the power to reel in the Obama-era deportation leniency for Dreamers but said the president cut too many corners in how he went about it. Writing for the 5-4 majority, the chief justice said the Dreamers had built up “reliance interests” that deserved more consideration.

     Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law who has tracked the chief justice over the years, said he expects the case to go more like the travel ban litigation.  “TPS is a fairly narrow program that doesn’t affect very sympathetic plaintiffs like the DACA recipients who came here through no fault of their own,” he said.