A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end deportation protections for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants, who are allowed to live and work in the US legally under Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
A day before the TPS was set to lapse, US judge Ana Reyes stated that the Department of Homeland Security boss doesn’t have the facts or law on her side.
Plaintiffs charge that Secretary [Kristi] Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants. This seems substantially likely, Reyes wrote.
The administration has argued that TPS schemes attract illegal immigration and have been abused and extended by Democrats over the years.
TPS prevents US officials from deporting immigrants to countries deemed unsafe due to natural disasters, armed conflicts, or other crises.
In her ruling, Reyes denied the Trump administration's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing the plaintiffs' request for deportation protection to remain in place while the case processes through the courts. The plaintiffs include five Haitian TPS holders.
Reyes emphatically countered negative claims made by Noem, asserting they are not the derogatory depictions mentioned. Haiti was designated for TPS in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in 2010, a status that has been renewed multiple times, most recently by the Biden administration in 2021.
The Trump administration has voiced concerns that TPS for Haitians has effectively turned into a pathway to permanent residency, which diverges from the program's original congressional intent.
They have sought to dismantle most TPS programs, which threatens deportation for hundreds of thousands of migrants from other nations as well, including Afghanistan and Venezuela.
Additionally, efforts to end protections impact about 2,500 Somalis, who risk losing their work authorizations and legal status as of March 17.
