Judge blocks DHS from ending deportation protections for 350,000 Haitians one day before they were set to lapse

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from revoking legal protections for Haitians enrolled in the Temporary Protected Status program, granting a last-minute reprieve to 350,000 immigrants who were set to lose their deportation protections on Tuesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes indefinitely paused the planned termination of Haiti’s TPS program, explicitly barring the federal government from invalidating the legal status and work permits of active enrollees and from arresting and deporting them. 

In an opinion accompanying her order, Reyes issued a forceful rebuke of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end the TPS policy for Haitians.

Reyes concluded Noem’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, writing that it failed to fully consider “overwhelming evidence of present danger” in crisis-stricken Haiti, which remains plagued by political instability, gang violence and widespread poverty.

Reyes also found Noem’s decision was “in part” rooted in “racial animus,” citing disparaging remarks that the secretary and President Trump have made about Haiti and immigrants.

“Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants,” Reyes wrote. “Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin suggested the Trump administration would ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the case.

“Supreme Court, here we come,” she said. “This is lawless activism that we will be vindicated on.”

“Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago, it was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades,” McLaughlin added.

TPS was created by Congress in 1990. Since then, Democratic and Republican administrations have used the policy to provide temporary legal refuge to foreigners from countries facing armed conflict, an environmental disaster or another emergency that makes their return unsafe.

The Trump administration has moved to dismantle most TPS programs, raising the specter of deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Venezuela.

The Trump administration argues these programs attract illegal immigration and that they have been abused and extended for too long by Democratic administrations.