Biden-Appointed Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Ending Deportation Protections For Haitians

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending sweeping deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian nationals.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in the District of Columbia, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, granted a request on Monday to temporarily block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 350,000 Haitians as a legal challenge plays out in court, according to the judge’s 83-page ruling. In a scathing opinion, the Uruguayan-born judge accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of racism.

“Plaintiffs charge that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants,” Reyes wrote. “This seems substantially likely.”

“Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants,” the judge continued. “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.”

First created in 1990, TPS provides work eligibility and deportation protection to foreign nationals living in the U.S., including those unlawfully present, whose home countries are experiencing any number of conflicts or devastating natural disasters, making it potentially unsafe for them to return, according to U.S. Citizenship and 🛂Immigration Services.

The Trump administration and other critics, however, have long argued that TPS has become a de facto amnesty program, with TPS designations being extended continually for countries over many years. Haitian nationals were first granted TPS in 2010