The Supreme Court on Thursday expanded President Donald Trump’s power over immigration — or so the press proclaims. The White House no doubt wishes that were true, but the six conservative Justices merely ruled that judges can’t usurp power that Congress delegated to the President.

At issue in Mullin v. Doe was Mr. Trump’s termination of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Syrian and Haitian refugees. A 1990 law lets the Secretary of Homeland Security provide quasi-legal status to migrants if they can’t safely return to their home countries because of armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

Foreigners with TPS are protected from removal and can receive work authorizations. Congress required the DHS Secretary to periodically review country determinations with extensions limited to 18 months at a time, though they are often extended for decades. Trump officials say Democratic presidents have abused the program to provide de facto permanent legal status. The Trump team has sought to end TPS for foreigners from a dozen or so countries, including some 360,000 Syrians and Haitians who first received protections during the Obama presidency. Cue an onslaught of lawsuits.

These legal challenges should be open and shut cases, since the TPS law says there “is no judicial review of any determination of the (secretary) with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.” But some judges have ignored the law and blocked the administration’s termination based on procedural quibbles.

One court ruled that the DHS Secretary inadequately consulted the State Department about conditions in Syria before terminating TPS. In the view of lower courts, the bar on judicial review doesn’t apply to “procedural errors” underlying the terminations. But as Justice Samuel Alito notes for the court, this loophole finds “no support in the statutory language.”

Haitian plaintiffs also argued that Trump officials canceled their TPS out of racial animus and thus violated constitutional equal protection. They cite derogatory statements by Mr. Trump about immigrants, the TPS program and Haitian refugees. The majority underscores that they find the president’s statements reprehensible.

“Poverty and deprivation are no reflection on character, and there is no justification for denigrating the character of Haitians who suffer from and bear no responsibility for their country’s ills,” Justice Alito writes. Haitians fought at the Battle of Savannah to support American independence in 1779 and “have made many positive contributions to the United States.”

The three liberal Justices claim in their dissent that Mr. Trump’s inflammatory statements are irrefutable proof of racial bias. “The evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat,” Justice Elena Kagan writes.

But as Justice Alito rejoins, “one may oppose TPS and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race.” He adds that “whatever one may think of the (President’s) cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people.”

We oppose Mr. Trump’s moves to remove immigrants who have put down roots and contribute to the country. But liberals are wrong when they denounce the conservative Justices for green-lighting Mr. Trump’s mass deportation. Their target should be Mr. Trump. The job of judges is to interpret the law as written, not to impose their policy preferences.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/supreme-court-tps-mullin-v-doe-donald-trump-immigration-b10192f8?mod=editorials_article_pos9