Altogether, more than 1 million people in the United States could lose protection from detention and deportation if these cancellations go through or are upheld. TPS beneficiaries from multiple countries and other groups have sued the Trump administration, claiming Noem’s decisions to terminate protections were reached or made unlawfully.
The federal government says TPS has been abused and the number of beneficiaries skyrocketed during Joe Biden’s time in office. Critics claim the Biden administration used the program to protect hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals from deportation indefinitely.
“TPS was never intended to be a de facto asylum program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement to the Dayton Daily News. “The Trump administration is restoring integrity to our immigration system to keep our homeland and its people safe.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Attorneys for TPS holders and some pro-immigration groups say the federal government appears to be very hostile toward a vital humanitarian program that serves people who are unable to return home safely and who contribute in meaningful ways to the economy and their communities.
“The TPS program plays a very valuable role because it protects people who are already in the United States from going back to dangerous situations,” said Laurence Benenson, vice president of policy and advocacy with the National Immigration Forum. “The problem we’re seeing now is widespread terminations of designations, even in cases where it does not appear the country conditions merit it.”
Haiti
Last year, DHS Secretary Noem announced that Haiti’s TPS would terminate on Feb. 3. If that were to happen, more than 330,000 Haitian nationals will be at risk of detention and deportation, likely including thousands of people who live in Springfield and Clark County.
A Springfield resident and several other TPS holders filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the process and procedures Noem used to make the determination to cancel Haiti’s designation. This case is Miot v. Trump.
Federal judge Ana Reyes in the District of Columbia paused the termination while the litigation proceeds. The federal government has appealed the judge’s ruling and has asked an appellate court to reverse the stay in order for the cancellation to take effect immediately. Filings in the appellate case are due this week, and the court could make a ruling as soon as Thursday, Feb. 19.
Haitians account for about a quarter of the roughly 1.3 million TPS beneficiaries who reside in the United States, says data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that was published by the Congressional Research Service. Ohio is home to more than 26,000 TPS beneficiaries.
Terminations
Last week, Noem announced she is canceling Yemen’s TPS. She announced the termination of Somalia’s TPS a month ago.
In the last year, Noem has announced that she is ending TPS for 13 countries, including Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Syria and Venezuela.
At the start of the Trump administrations, 17 countries had TPS designations.
If all 13 of these terminations go through, more than 1 million people would find themselves at risk at detention and removal, plus TPS holders also would lose work authorization. Multiple terminations already have gone into effect.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
If Noem gets her way, the only countries that would continue to have active TPS designations would be El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine. And TPS for those nations are set to expire later this year.
It’s unclear whether Noem will seek extensions, redesignations or terminations for those countries. DHS did not respond to this news outlet’s questions about this matter.
President Donald Trump tried to end TPS for El Salvador and Sudan during his first term, but those decisions resulted in litigation and the Biden administration rescinded the terminations when he took office.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said Ukraine is the only nation in that group of TPS countries that are not slated for termination that meets the statutory requirements to benefit from the program.
FAIR, which supports greatly reducing and strictly limiting immigration, recently filed an amicus brief in the District of Columbia court of appeals in support of the Trump administration’s emergency request to allow Haiti’s termination to take effect.
“Generally speaking, TPS have been widely abused and have rarely been ‘temporary,’” Mehlman said. “In some instances, designations triggered by natural disasters or conflicts — some as far back as the 1990s — have been renewed time and again and are only now being terminated by the Trump administration, a move that FAIR supports."
Mehlman said once the armed conflict ends in Ukraine the country should be removed from the TPS program.
In court documents, attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Miot v. Trump case say that the Trump administration repeatedly has terminated TPS designations of predominantly non-white countries. They claim that Noem did not follow the review process and steps mandated by Congress to reach her TPS determinations, and instead her decisions were politically motivated and were the result of animus and “discriminatory intent” to remove nonwhite immigrants from the country.
Judge Reyes in a memorandum opinion explaining her ruling granting a stay in the Miot v. Trump case stated that Noem has “terminated every TPS country designation that have reached her desk — 12 countries up, 12 countries down." Her opinion came out before DHS announced the termination of TPS for Yemen.
Reyes wrote that this fact alone suggests the secretary engaged in a pattern and practice of terminating all TPS designations without completing country-specific periodic reviews that are mandated by the TPS statute, which was approved by Congress.
Government attorneys have said in court documents that all of the TPS designations that were going to expire under Biden were extended or renewed, which suggests his administration did not perform the mandatory reviews.
TPS terminations can be appropriate when country conditions improve, but the United States for a long time has made a commitment to not send people back to their home countries if it is not safe, said Benenson, with the National Immigration Forum, which is pro-immigration organization based in Washington, DC.
Many experts — and even the State Department — have said that Haiti continues to be ruled by gangs and violence is rampant.
Benenson said every presidential administration should complete a fact-based, neutral examination of country conditions to determine if TPS is still necessary. He said recent court filings rulings suggest the Trump administration has not done that for multiple countries.
“I think recent court decisions on some of these terminations raise red flags,” he said. “In some cases, the emergency is over and it’s safe to return, but in other cases, it really isn’t.”
Haiti case, other litigation
Reyes’ ruling earlier this month that paused the termination of Haiti’s TPS was a victory for the plaintiffs, at least in the short term. The Trump administration has asked the circuit court of appeals to reverse that ruling, and a decision could be issued as soon as Thursday.
The Trump administration recently has won some favorable decisions in similar kinds of cases in courtrooms in other parts of the country.
Twice, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the government’s emergency requests to allow the termination of Venezuela’s TPS to take effect, even though a district court judge ruled Noem’s determination was reached unlawfully. About 600,000 TPS holders are from Venezuela.
Last week, the Ninth District Court of Appeals in California granted the government’s request for a stay pending appeal that allows the termination of TPS designations for Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua to go into effect. The appellate court ruled that the federal government is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal by either showing either the district court lacked jurisdiction or Noem’s decision-making process to terminate designations was not “arbitrary and capricious,” as claimed by plaintiffs.
“Given the improved situation in each of these countries, we are wisely concluding what was intended to be a temporary designation,” Noem said in a prepared statement last week about the court decision.
Lawsuits in Illinois, Massachusetts and New York challenge the end of TPS for Burma, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Syria. Litigation in California challenges the cancellation of TPS for countries including Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
District courts currently are blocking TPS termination for Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan and Syria.
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