Maina wa Njuguna
Earlier this week, a federal judge U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes of the District of Columbia temporarily blocked the Trump Administration’s move to terminate TEMPORARY PROTECTIVE STATUS (TPS) for HAITIANS, maintaining lawful status and work permits for roughly 350,000 beneficiaries.
Five Haitian TPS holders filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last July seeking reprieve from an abrupt decision to terminate their legal statuses and force them to go back to a war torn country, the very reason TPS was granted in the first place.
Despite a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plan to end the program on February 3, 2026, the court’s stay in Lesly Miot et al. v. Trump et al. halts this action.
In her ruling, judge Reyes said the termination order is “null, void and of no legal effect.” Even after the decision, Haitians in around the country said they feared the reprieve was only temporary.
Reyes wrote that the Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem did not consult with appropriate agencies before issuing the order — as required by federal law — and it seems “substantially likely” she “preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
The judge also noted that while the Trump’s administration dismisses “the harms to Haitian TPS holders are speculative,” the State Department issued a travel advisory on July 15 that individuals should not travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited healthcare.”
“Do not travel to Haiti for any reason’ does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, suitable for return,” wrote Reyes, in her a scathing ruling. As of last March, more than 330,000 Haitians had been approved for TPS, according to the Congressional Research Service.
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