In the middle of an interview last week, former President Donald Trump casually tossed out “absolutely I’d revoke (temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants) and I’d bring them back to their country,” referring to the humanitarian immigration program that has given protections from deportation and work authorization to some 200,000 Haitians in the U.S.

This comes after Trump and running mate JD Vance have spent weeks tarring Haitians with vicious lies about eating pets.

The problem for a possible future President Trump is that it’s not up to the president. This is not Louis XIV proclaiming: “l’état, c’est moi,” i.e. “I am the state.” Trump apparently has not bothered to think through whether a president has the legal capability to make a decision in this manner because it doesn’t matter to him.

The former president seems to have forgotten that, when he was in the Oval Office, he already tried to terminate multiple TPS designations and was shot down by a federal judge, who pointed out that these are supposed to be agency decisions free from direct political interference.

Or perhaps Trump does know that and doesn’t care, figuring that he’s sufficiently stacked the federal courts with his ideological allies. Maybe he doesn’t intend to respect the courts’ limitations at all; the former president certainly has been clear about his desire to be a “dictator” when it comes to his immigration plans.

None of that changes the fact that TPS as a program was established by Congress and signed by President George H.W. Bush as part of a broader immigration law in 1990.

Career staff at the Department of Homeland Security make TPS decisions in consultation with the National Security Council, the State Department and sometimes the Justice Department. None of it is done lightly or on a whim, and it is the subject of analyses and considerations that Trump, who prefers acting on gut instincts, has little patience for. But the law is the law.

This isn’t the first aspect of established immigration law that Trump and Vance say they will alter unilaterally. From terminating TPS to parole and asylum and the refugee program and other lawful immigration pathways, all of it is political fodder. None of these are actually decisions that a president or a vice president are empowered to make in this way.

That doesn’t mean that the executive doesn’t get extensive leeway on immigration in general. Part of why Trump was able to remake large aspects of the immigration system on his own is that Congress has delegated substantial power (probably too much power) to the president on one of the most significant policy areas in the country. Underlying immigration laws have not markedly changed in decades, which is what subjects the system to so much ad hoc, electorally-driven rejiggering.

The only way to fix this is for our paralyzed legislative body, called the Congress, to do its job and redesign a logical and humane immigration system for the 21st century that will understand and respect the role of immigration in this country’s culture and economy, including the need for avenues of humanitarian migration, while maintaining order and fairness.

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