Top Court Told Trump’s End to Migrant Shield Not Driven by Race

The Trump administration told a divided US Supreme Court that past remarks by the president disparaging Haiti and immigrants weren’t racist and shouldn’t get in the way of the government stripping temporary protections for migrants.

Under questioning from two liberal justices on Wednesday, the government’s top appellate lawyer said that President Donald Trump’s comments in recent years calling Haiti a “shithole” country and claiming that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US were unrelated to race and irrelevant to deciding the lawfulness of administration policy decisions.

The high court’s extraordinary parsing of the American president’s remarks were part of ...