Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Ending TPS for Haitians

The ruling pauses the Trump administration’s plan to end a program that has allowed more than 350,000 people from Haiti to remain in the United States.

A federal judge late on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending a humanitarian protection for more than 350,000 Haitians, who have been able to live and work in the United States under what is known as Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S.

Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington denied the administration’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s termination of T.P.S., set for Feb. 3. The plaintiffs’ request for the status to remain in place was granted until the case is fully litigated.

In a scathing, 83-page ruling, Judge Reyes said that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, did not have the authority to end the status and that her arguments that maintaining T.P.S. for Haitians was not in the national interest were flawed. Her reasoning, the judge wrote, “focuses on Haitians outside the United States or here illegally, ignoring that Haitian T.P.S. holders already live here, and legally so.”

That analysis must also include economic considerations, according to the law. But Ms. Noem, Judge Reyes wrote, ”ignores altogether the billions Haitian T.P.S. holders contribute to the economy.”

The ruling offers a reprieve for Haitians with T.P.S., some of whom have lived in the country for years. But the federal government is almost certain to appeal, leaving the Haitians in limbo for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, their fate could end up decided by the Supreme Court.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said in a statement that the administration would be heading to the high court.

“Temporary means temporary,” she said, “and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench.”

Judge Reyes said the administration was motivated, at least in part, by racial animus against Haiti, which is a majority Black country, and that its termination ran afoul of the law.

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“The mismatch between what the secretary said in the termination and what the evidence shows confirms that the termination of Haiti’s T.P.S. designation was not the product of reasoned decision-making, but of a preordained outcome justified by pretextual reasons,” she wrote.

Created by Congress, Temporary Protected Status is a designation that the U.S. government can give to countries grappling with natural disasters, armed conflicts or other acute crises that make conditions in the country particularly dangerous. Under T.P.S., people from those countries who are already in the United States can remain temporarily. When a country loses the T.P.S. designation, former recipients fall out of legal status and can be deported.

Haiti first received the designation in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. It has been extended several times since, most recently by the Biden administration in 2021, after the assassination of the country’s last elected president. Since then, Haiti has been grappling with gang violence, political instability and food shortages.

In the case before Judge Reyes, government lawyers asserted that repeated T.P.S. extensions by previous administrations effectively turned a temporary protection into permanent residency, which it argued was contrary to Congress’s intent.

In a separate T.P.S. case, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Jan. 29 that the homeland security secretary had exceeded the authority granted by Congress when she revoked the protection for Venezuelans. But that ruling had no immediate effect because the Supreme Court had already stayed a lower-court ruling in the case.

T.P.S. recipients do not have a path to a green card or citizenship. But they remain in lawful status, with Social Security numbers and employment authorization, as long as the U.S. government extends the protection, typically every 18 months.

In her decision on Monday, Judge Reyes, who was named to the federal bench by President Biden, said that the Trump administration had not conducted a required assessment to determine whether it was safe to return people to Haiti. She noted that senior government officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had said publicly that Haiti was facing “immediate security challenges.”

The State Department currently assigns its highest warning against travel to Haiti, indicating that the U.S. government believes that visiting the country poses life-threatening risks.

Ms. Noem’s “conclusion that Haiti (a majority nonwhite country) faces merely ‘concerning’ conditions cannot be squared with the ‘perfect storm of suffering’ and ‘staggering humanitarian toll’ described in page after page” of the record, the judge wrote.

The legal team that represented the Haitians applauded the ruling but said the legal fight was not over.

“Although the government will probably appeal, today’s ruling allows Haitian T.P.S. holders to breathe a sigh of relief, even if only a small one,” said Geoff Pipoly, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “We look forward to defending the court’s ruling on appeal.”

The judge’s decision was anxiously anticipated in Haitian communities, not least in Springfield, Ohio, the small city that was thrust into the national immigration debate after President Trump echoed baseless rumors during his campaign in late 2024 that Haitians there had been eating their neighbors’ pets.

Mayor Rob Rue, who has been navigating the fallout in the city that is home to more than 10,000 Haitians, said the judge’s ruling was welcome news. “This provides clarity and stability for families who are already part of our community, he said, adding that the decision reflected “the reality that many individuals are working, paying taxes, raising families and contributing everyday to the life of our city.”

In her decision, the judge said that President Trump had disparaged many immigrants from the developing world, including Haiti, and she specifically made a reference to Springfield. At a minimum, she said, Mr. Trump had influenced Secretary Noem’s decision through his many public statements.

Since last year, the Trump administration has moved to terminate T.P.S. for about a million people from at least nine countries. As federal agents descended on Minnesota, the administration announced that it would end T.P.S. for Somalis.

The health care, manufacturing and service sectors could lose hundreds of thousands of workers if the status is terminated.

Several courts have rejected the administration’s efforts to end the program.

On Dec. 31, a federal judge in California ruled that the Trump administration had unlawfully terminated T.P.S. for more than 60,000 people from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. In a separate ruling, on Dec. 30, a federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the termination of the status for about 230 people from South Sudan, similarly finding that the administration had acted unlawfully.

The Homeland Security Department has said it strongly disagrees with the decisions in California and Boston, and has signaled its intent to appeal.

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