The Haitian program is one of several that the Department of Homeland Security is about to end as the Trump administration holds more difficult boundaries on immigration.
A demonstrator of Wannial Catraz Pro Trump speaks.
On Trump’s July 1 day of visit to Wannial Catraz, a handful of pro-Trump protesters appeared at the entrance to Wannial Catraz.
- A federal judge has prevented the Trump administration from early ending a temporary work program for immigration in Haiti.
A federal judge has stopped the Trump administration from terminating a temporary program that provides work permits and protection from deportation for more than half a million Haitian immigrants a few months earlier than their expiration date.
The Department of Homeland Security announced in February it had withdrawn a program called “Temporary Protection Status” for Haitians. Trump’s predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden, was scheduled to run until February 3, 2026.
However, Brooklyn US District Judge Brian Kogan ruled on July 1 that DHS Executive Director Christie Noem failed to follow the directions and timelines mandated by Congress to reconsider the program.
“Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in the merits (and in fact do),” Kogan wrote. “The plaintiff also showed that he would suffer an irreparable injury without postponement.”
Federal courts have prevented Trump from completing most registrations in a temporary work program for immigration during his first term. However, the Supreme Court in May shows that the administration could end a temporary program for Venezuelans and allow other terminations.
The Trump administration also suspended another program protecting immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela in June.
Trump imposed a travel ban on people arriving from 12 countries, including Haiti, in June. The State Department has a Level 4 “don’t travel” warning to Haiti, citing widespread inquisitions, violent crimes and near-simultaneous collapse of emergency services.
The advocacy group Haiti Bridge Alliance has denounced the administration’s move to end a temporary work program a month later after the 2021 assassination of President Giovenel Moise and the 7.2 magnitude earthquake. The group said the country, which has more than 1 million people displaced, is facing rampaging gang violence and food and fuel shortages.
“This is not just cruel — the danger of national approval,” Gaerin Joseph, executive director of the Haiti Bridge Alliance, said in a statement regarding the termination of the program. “Sending hundreds of thousands of people back into a country filled with hospitals closed and food-poor gangs is a direct attack on the black immigrant community.”
Noem decided to end the temporary program on August 3rd, then reverted the date to September 2nd.
Kogan has discovered that the government has not claimed that Norms have legal authority to end temporary programs. Instead, the government argued that Noem was exercising her authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Cogan, appointed by George W. Bush, found Noem’s actions to be “illegal” due to his lack of statutory authority.
Kogan also said the Haitians’ interest in being able to live and work in the United States “far more than the likelihood of enforcing immigration laws and engaging in the programme to do anything freely and freely.
The lawsuit was filed on March 14 by nine Haitians. Haitians said they would not conduct necessary reviews of Haiti’s current conditions before NOEM terminates the temporary program early.
