A federal judge dealt a major blow to the Trump administration Monday, temporarily blocking the government’s attempt to strip immigration protections from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and potentially boot them out of the country.
Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., threw down the hammer, ordering the government to keep the program alive after it was set to expire Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The ruling means roughly 350,000 Haitian immigrants can keep their legal protections and work permits, avoiding the threat of deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security had been gunning to terminate protections for Haitians under the Temporary Protected Status program, claiming it was against the “national interest” for them to stay.
The TPS program, created by Congress back in 1990, allows the government to grant temporary legal status to people fleeing war-torn countries or disaster zones. It’s designed as a safety net.
The judge ruled that the evidence strongly indicates Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was motivated by racial animus rather than whether it was safe for Haitians to return to the country.
“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,” Reyes said in her 83-page opinion, according to Notus. “The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”
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