ADVERTISEMENT

Trump Immigration Agenda Suffers New Defeat With Ruling on Haitians’ Status

U.S. Is Blocked From Ending Protected Status for Haitians

(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge blocked the U.S. from ending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, the second court to find that revoking TPS was improper.

The decision, the latest in a series of blows to the White House’s immigration policy, comes after the Trump administration planned to remove the protection from tens of thousands of Haitians living legally in the U.S. They gained it after an earthquake devastated the island nation in 2010. The U.S. said conditions had improved enough for their return.

“The evidence shows the White House exerted significant influence” over Elaine Duke, then acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, “to reach a predetermined decision to terminate TPS and abate the presence of nonwhite immigrants in the country,” U.S. District Judge William Kuntz in Brooklyn, New York, said Thursday in issuing a preliminary injunction blocking the program’s termination.

“Evidence of their political motivations is replete throughout the administrative record,” Kuntz wrote. He found that Duke “considered how the Haiti TPS decision fit into the White House’s grander “America First’ strategy.”

The Justice Department didn’t have an immediate comment on the ruling.

Series of Blows

The ruling is the second to block President Donald Trump’s administration from halting the program. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary order in October stopping the government from ending TPS for immigrants from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan as well as Haiti. The government had already granted an extension of the program after that decision. Kuntz issued his own ruling after a non-jury trial in January.

It comes after a succession of obstacles to the president’s plans for a wall on the Mexican border and after a ruling Monday barring the administration from forcing Central Americans seeking asylum from persecution to wait in Mexico while their applications are being processed.

In a 145-page decision, Kuntz cited evidence that administration officials pressured Duke to end TPS for Haitians. He cited a November 2017 meeting convened by John Kelly, then chief of staff, that also included Stephen Miller, an adviser to the president and an immigration hawk, and Jeff Sessions, attorney general at the time. Howard Roin, a lawyer for the Haitians, had argued Sessions “leaned on” Duke to terminate TPS.

Not Just Input

“The manner in which Acting Secretary Duke, DHS and the Department of State undertook the review process also strongly suggests the decision was pretextual,” Kuntz said in his ruling. He cited Kelly’s directives to his staff to “search for criminality and welfare data” as “further evidence the agency was fishing for reasons to terminate TPS for Haiti.”

Kuntz concluded that the plaintiffs had shown him evidence the White House wanted to end TPS for Haitians, influenced Duke’s decision and “did not simply provide input,” adding that “the White House ‘led’ the decision to terminate TPS.”

In his ruling, Kuntz also cited statements by Trump about immigrants from countries like Haiti, El Salvador and African nations that the president derided as “shithole countries.” The president has denied using those words.

During the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Marutollo disputed such an animus, saying “the evidence is just not there” and arguing that Duke made her decision after conducting a “thorough and vigorous review.”

The judge ticked through evidence provided by the plaintiffs, which he said showed government officials manipulated the facts to discount “negative” information about a hurricane, changed their interpretation of the TPS statute and edited a memo to make it support their case for termination. The program had been extended repeatedly since the earthquake and a subsequent cholera outbreak beset Haiti.

The plaintiffs said during the trial that at least 27,000 children were born to Haitians in the U.S. under the program who could face separation from their parents if TPS were ended.

Duke faced a deadline in late 2017 to extend TPS for 50,000 Haitians in the U.S. and was leaning toward renewal, Roin told Kuntz in opening arguments. Kuntz said Thursday it was only after the Kelly meeting, with direct pressure from the White House, that she decided to end the program.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.