U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes — a foreign-born, Biden-appointed, lesbian judge who previously worked as a lawyer to fight the first Trump administration’s immigration policy and helped the U.N. secure asylum for so-called refugees — obliged her fellow immigration activists on Monday, blocking the revocation of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status.
That status, which Haitian migrants have enjoyed since January 2010 and over 352,000 Haitian migrants enjoy today, was set to expire on Tuesday. Without Reyes’ intervention, the Trump administration would have been able to immediately repatriate many of those Haitians who have strained citizen resources and displaced American labor in cities such as Springfield, Ohio.
‘Temporary means temporary.’
Reyes, a Uruguayan native, claimed, however, that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem not only violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause when terminating the TPS designation for Haiti but had likely done so “because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
Much of Reyes’ Monday ruling in the class-action lawsuit reads like a piece of immigration activist agitprop.
In addition to characterizing Haitian TPS holders as valuable contributors to American society and some class members’ removal back to Haiti as “devastating because they have no meaningful ties to the country,” Reyes questioned why it was necessary to let the status expire now:
Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. 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 health care system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things — in the public interest is not one of them.
The foreign-born judge suggested further that while the Trump administration “contends that, at most, the harms to Haitian TPS holders are speculative,” the State Department has issued travel advisories to Americans warning of the threats of kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest in the third-world nation.
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Photo by REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images
Noem determined last year after reviewing country conditions and consulting with the appropriate government agencies that the island nation no longer met the conditions for a TPS designation.
Reyes, the same judge who tried unsuccessfully last year to torpedo the War Department’s ban on transvestites in the military, makes no secret of her animus toward the American-born DHS secretary throughout her ruling, using her conclusion, for instance, to cast Noem as a cold-hearted ignoramus.
“Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side — or at least has ignored them,” wrote the Biden judge. “Does not have the law on her side — or at least has ignored it.”
Reyes’ fellow activists celebrated her ruling.
“This was the right decision. There is no evidence that the Trump administration took the time to make a clear-eyed assessment of the risks these families would face back in Haiti before moving to revoke TPS,” Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement obtained by GBH News. “On the contrary, the revocation appears to have been driven by racial animus and political ideology.”
“We can breathe for a little bit,” Rose-Thamar Joseph, operations director of the Haitian Support Center in migrant-overwhelmed Springfield, Ohio, told the Associated Press.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in response to the ruling, “Supreme Court, here we come.”
“This is lawless activism that we will be vindicated on,” continued McLaughlin. “Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago, it was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades.”
“Temporary means temporary, and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench,” added McLaughlin.
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Haiti, Haitian, Shithole country, Third world, Immigration, Migration, Tps, Temporary protected status, Kristi noem, Ana reyes, Judicial activism, Politics
