Copied from Heather Cox Richardson's email this morning.
Yesterday, the day before Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes stopped that termination until a pending court case worked its way through the courts.
At stake first of all were the lives of about 353,000 Haitians living legally in the United States since the catastrophic Haitian earthquake of 2010, whom the termination of that status would render undocumented overnight. The impact on their lives would also affect their families, friends, and employers. Also at stake, though, is Trump administration officials’ rejection of both facts and the rule of law on which the United States was founded in order to advance their white nationalist ideology.
As Judge Reyes explains, Congress established Temporary Protective Status in 1990 to change previously haphazard executive decisions about whether to receive immigrants from disaster-stricken countries that left recipients unclear about their immigration status. In its place, Congress created “a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics.” It established criteria and a process for designating a country under TPS, accepting applications for immigration under TPS, and reviewing that designation periodically to determine if that designation should be extended. The system leaves to the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to evaluate those extensions.
And yet, the judge explains, Secretary Noem ignored the process and the criteria, instead relying on ideology. On December 1, 2025, Noem posted: “I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Noem’s statements echo those of President Donald J. Trump, who referred to Haiti as a “sh*thole” country and tried to end TPS for people from Haiti beginning in 2017. During the 2024 campaign, Trump falsely accused Haitian immigrants of “eating the dogs,” “eating the cats,” and “eating the pets” of people who live in Springfield, Ohio. He insisted he would revoke Haiti’s TPS designation and send immigrants “back to their country.”
Five Haitian TPS holders sued to stop the administration from ending their protected status, claiming Noem ignored the legal procedures because of her “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” Reyes says Noem did indeed ignore the law and that it “seems substantially likely” she did so because of her white nationalist ideology, noting that Noem has terminated all twelve TPS designations that have reached her desk.
But, as Reyes points out, the facts simply don’t match their ideology. TPS holders participate in the workforce at the exceptionally high rate of 94.6%. Far from being “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” the plaintiffs in the case challenging Noem’s decision are a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, a software engineer at a national bank, a toxicology lab assistant, a college economics major, and a registered nurse.
When Noem claimed that it was “contrary to the national interest” to permit about 350,000 Haitian immigrants to stay in the country until it is safe to go back to Haiti, Reyes noted, she characterized them as criminals without any actual evidence. She also ignored the public’s interest in the fact that Haitian TPS holders pay $1.3 billion a year in taxes, and that through their work in sectors that are desperate for laborers, they add about $3.4 billion to the U.S. economy annually. They are deeply embedded in their communities, and tearing them out would shatter families and worksites.
“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Reyes wrote as she decided against the Trump administration. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither…, she pounds X ([formerly known as] Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. 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.”