Judge blocks DHS from ending deportation protections
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from revoking legal protections for Haitians enrolled in the Temporary Protected Status program, providing a last-minute reprieve to about 350,000 immigrants – including members of the Haitian population that has settled in Charleroi – who were set to lose their deportation protections on Tuesday.
The government’s move would have cleared the way for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to begin mass deportations of people from that island nation.
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes indefinitely paused the planned termination of Haiti’s TPS program, barring the federal government from invalidating the legal status and work permits of active enrollees and from arresting and deporting them.
In an 83-page ruling, Reyes rebuked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end the TPS policy for Haitians.
Reyes said Noem’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. She said it failed to consider “overwhelming evidence of present danger” in Haiti, which has been wracked with political and economic instability and gang violence.
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.”
She rejected depictions of Haitians as criminals in her ruling, writing that “Haitian immigrants are overwhelmingly law-abiding, with incarceration rates lower than those of native-born Americans.”
Reyes also concluded that Noem failed to account for the $1.3 billion that Haitian TPS holders pay in taxes every year, and she outlined President Donald Trump’s previous statements denigrating Haiti and Haitian people.
In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin spoke out against the ruling and hinted that the Trump administration would ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
“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 said.
TPS was created by Congress in 1999. It allows immigrants to live and work in the United States due to conditions – such as natural disasters or ongoing armed conflict in their home countries. In recent months, the federal government has also sought to end protected status for immigrants from countries such as Venezuela, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Honduras, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Nepal and Somalia.
The Trump administration argues these programs attract illegal immigration and that they have been abused and extended for too long by Democratic administrations.