A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status for more than 350,000 Haitians in the United States this week, in an opinion that drew fierce criticism from conservative legal experts.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued a lengthy and scathing ruling late on Monday blocking the end of TPS for Haitians, accusing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of not properly following procedure in terminating the special status, which was set to expire on Tuesday. Reyes also spent much of her opinion ripping the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitians, accusing it of being inhumane and racist.
“The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste. Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight,” Reyes wrote in her ruling. “She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured.”
“This approach is many things — in the public interest is not one of them,” Reyes added.
The federal statute creating TPS says courts have no jurisdiction to review the DHS secretary’s determination to extend the temporary status to immigrants from any country “with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”
But Reyes said the federal law establishing TPS does not strip her of jurisdiction to rule in the case, because the Haitians who sued the federal government challenged “how the Secretary went about making her determination,” rather than the determination itself.
Reyes said the Trump administration lacked evidence that conditions in Haiti had improved, which would have allowed it to end the TPS designation for the country.
“Taken together, the record strongly suggests that Secretary Noem’s decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation was motivated, at least in part, by racial animus. The mismatch between what the Secretary said in the Termination and what the evidence shows confirms that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was not the product of reasoned decision-making, but of a preordained outcome justified by pretextual reasons,” Reyes said.
Haiti was originally given a TPS designation by the Obama administration after the devastating earthquake there in January 2010, and that status was subsequently extended multiple times, with the most recent extension coming in July 2024 under the Biden administration. The final extension went through Feb. 3, but with Reyes’s ruling, the end of TPS has been postponed as the case continues.
Reyes’s Monday ruling was panned by conservative legal commentators, who slammed it as a particularly egregious example of judicial activism and predicted it would be reversed upon appeal.
Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor, called Reyes a “joke” and said the ruling reflected an effort by Reyes to achieve her desired policy outcome, not to weigh the legality of the Trump administration’s action.
“Policy preferences masquerading as legal analysis,” Shipley said. “If she was DHS Sec. she would decide differently. She’s not DHS Sec. [T]he decision doesn’t need to please her delicate sensibilities to be lawful. Judge Reyes cannot separate her judicial decision-making from her progressive worldview.”
Mike Davis, founder of the conservative Article III Project, predicted that Reyes’s order would “get reversed” and said it would happen “quickly,” while Ed Whelan, a conservative legal commentator and Trump critic, said the ruling “looks highly dubious.”
The Trump administration can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin already has her sights set on the court above the D.C. Circuit for a favorable ruling.
OBAMA-APPOINTED JUDGE AGAIN BLOCKS TRUMP FROM ENDING LEGAL STATUS FOR THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS
“Supreme Court, here we come. 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. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench,” McLaughlin said in a post on X.
The Supreme Court, which has largely ruled in favor of the Trump administration on its emergency docket, previously gave the administration the green light twice to end TPS for Venezuela, suggesting that the justices view the federal government as having greater say over TPS designations than courts.