The U.S. Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court of the United States on Wednesday to allow the administration to move forward with ending temporary deportation protections for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants.
The request for emergency relief is the latest development in legal disputes stemming from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to terminate Temporary Protected Status for several countries. Ending the designation would make affected immigrants eligible for deportation.
The Supreme Court has previously allowed the administration to roll back similar protections for Venezuelan migrants, while a separate request involving Syrian immigrants remains pending before the court.
Haiti was first granted Temporary Protected Status in 2010 after a devastating earthquake killed more than 300,000 people and caused widespread destruction across the country.
During his first administration, President Donald Trump moved to rescind Haiti’s TPS designation. However, the decision became tied up in litigation and was not implemented before he left office.
After returning to the presidency for a second term, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced steps to end Haiti’s TPS designation, with the change scheduled to take effect Feb. 3.
In announcing the decision, Noem said ending the protections reflected “a necessary and strategic vote of confidence in the new chapter Haiti is turning” and aligned with the administration’s broader foreign policy approach toward a “secure, sovereign and self-reliant Haiti.” She acknowledged that some conditions in the country remained concerning but said certain areas were suitable for return.
In December, five Haitian nationals filed a lawsuit challenging the termination of TPS and sought to block the move. A federal district court granted their request last month, concluding in part that the decision to end the designation was likely motivated by racial animus, without providing any evidence to justify that determination.
“Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee and first LGBTQ federal judge, wrote.
“Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] 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 added.
Noem has since been replaced as head of the Department of Homeland Security by Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullen. She is now serving as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas.
The DOJ appealed the ruling, but a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to block the lower court’s decision.
In its filing asking the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the legal reasoning adopted by the lower court could undermine a wide range of immigration policies implemented by the administration, CBS News reported.
Sauer wrote that the theory relied upon in the ruling could potentially invalidate “virtually every immigration policy of the current administration.”
Federal courts, he said, “are again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations, while crediting harms to respondents that inhere in the temporary nature of TPS.”
Temporary Protected Status was established by Congress in 1990 to provide temporary protections for individuals from countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions that make returning unsafe.
Individuals from countries designated for TPS generally cannot be deported while the designation remains in place and are eligible to obtain work authorization. The protections are typically granted for periods of up to 18 months and can be renewed if conditions in the designated country persist.
As part of his immigration policy agenda, President Donald Trump has moved to terminate TPS designations for immigrants from multiple countries. Those include Afghanistan, Haiti, Nicaragua, Somalia and Yemen, among others, CBS News noted.