The Trump administration expressed strong disapproval on Monday following a federal judge’s decision to temporarily halt the termination of deportation protections for over 350,000 Haitian migrants residing in the United States.

Judge Ana Reyes, appointed by former President Joe Biden, determined that Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), had overstepped her bounds by attempting to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for these Haitian individuals. The judge stated that letting their deportation protections and work permits lapse would not benefit the public interest.

“We’re heading to the Supreme Court,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin posted on X.

She criticized the ruling as “lawless activism,” asserting their position would ultimately be validated. McLaughlin pointed out that Haiti’s TPS was initially granted after an earthquake over 15 years ago and argued it was never meant to become a perpetual amnesty program, a stance she claims previous administrations have adopted for many years.

Emphasizing the original intent of the program, McLaughlin stated, “Temporary means temporary,” and assured that “the final word will not come from a judge making decisions beyond their authority.”

Since its inception in the 1990s, the TPS program has provided humanitarian aid to migrants fleeing regions afflicted by natural disasters and conflict.

The federal program allows migrants to enjoy temporary legal status in the US and obtain work permits. 

The TPS designation for Haiti was set to expire Tuesday, but it is now on hold indefinitely. 

“Plaintiffs charge that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants. This seems substantially likely,” Reyes wrote in her scathing 83-page ruling. 

“Secretary Noem has terminated every TPS country designation to have reached her desk — twelve countries up, twelve countries down,” the DC-based judge continued. “Her conclusion that Haiti (a majority nonwhite country) faces merely ‘concerning’ conditions cannot be squared with the ‘perfect storm of suffering’ and ‘staggering’ ‘humanitarian toll’ described in page-after-page of the Certified Administrative Record (CAR).” 

President Trump attempted to end TPS for Haitians last summer, but lawsuits forced DHS to push back the end date for the program. 

Reyes ruled that federal rules do not grant Noem “unbounded discretion to make whatever determination she wants, any way she wants” with regards to TPS. 

“Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight,” Reyes fumed. “She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. 

“This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them.”

The Obama administration first granted Haitian migrants TPS status in 2010 in the wake of a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 100,000 in the impoverished nation. 

The designation has been extended several times since, most recently by the Biden administration in 2021.