TPS Hearing Temporarily Stalls Deportations of Haitian’s

SAN FRANCISCO (02-03) – With the expiration of Temporary Protection Status (TPS) granted to 350,000 Haitians set to expire on February 3rd, a hearing was held on February 2, in US District Court in Washington, DC to halt an action by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to end the program.

During the Washington court proceeding, human rights advocates in San Francisco rallied outside the US Immigration Court to denounce the administration’s enforcement agenda and demand sweeping policy changes. They urged officials to extend the deadline for Haitian Temporary Protected Status (TPS), to safeguard refugees from all TPS-designated countries, abolish ICE, and end what they described as systemic attacks on immigrant communities, along with anti-immigrant and anti-Black policies within the Department of Homeland Security.

Participants from the Haiti Action Committee, the NorCal TPS Coalition, the Myanmar Student Union, and Community Liberation Programs joined other human rights advocates in urging the court to issue a stay on the program’s termination, saying that without such an order, deportations could begin within 24 hours.

In the Washington hearing, US District Court Judge Ana Reyes blocked the Trump administration’s deadline for ending the Haitian TPS program temporarily to allow a lawsuit regarding the matter of extending the program to proceed. It was widely reported that in her written Opinion Judge Reyes found it “substantially likely” that “Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem preordained her termination decision because of ‘hostility to nonwhite immigrants.’”

During the rally in San Francisco, Haitian-born Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of Haiti Action Committee, spoke of the present dire conditions in Haiti. He began his talk by thanking everyone for their continued support and the exemplary solidarity of people in the US who stand on principal with the people of Haiti.

He followed with referring to the “struggle back home” where people are yearning to “have a safe life and livelihood, without fear of being in their home…or fear of being kidnapped by paramilitary rightwing death squads.”

He attributed the horrific present circumstances that have overwhelmed Haiti to the “US-orchestrated coup” in 2004 to overthrow the democratically elected President Jean-Bertran Aristide and related that it was followed by the US/UN occupation of Haiti “and that since then, we have been going through Hell!”

Having recently spoken to people in Haiti, he said, “To send people back right now is a crime.” Some of those he conversed with told of local police tasked thru actions to serve the government’s narrative that Haiti is safe for the return of refugees. He described those efforts saying, “Nobody is safe – for the people who live there, and not the people who would be sent back,” noting that many who have returned have been killed.

Labossiere described the present living conditions as “Third World” in nature with increasing illnesses and diseases, calling any proposed notion of returning refugees there a “Crime.”

The hearing, regarding DHS Secretary Noem’s decision not to extend TPS for Haitians, was described in a notice published in the Federal Register by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, on November 28 of last year. In it, she referenced the reason for cancelation was two-fold: that “Because of interference by a federal district court judge” and that “the Secretary determined that Haiti no longer meets the conditions for the designation for Temporary Protected Status.”

The reference to “interference by a federal court judge” is regarding a case in July of 2025 in which US District Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Eastern District of New York ruled that Secretary Noem had exceeded her authority by attempting to terminate TPS status for Haitians before its expiration date.

Regarding Noem’s assertion that Haiti “no longer meets the conditions for the designation,” it is not only factually incorrect, but also in direct conflict with and an assault on the TPS program as outlined in the Immigration Act of 1990 created by Congress. Specifically, the intent of TPS is to protect refugees by offering protective status in the United States due to conditions making it unsafe for them to return to their home countries.

Factors to be considered in granting residents of impacted countries TPS status under the Act include the effects of natural disasters, epidemics and ongoing armed conflict. Participants in the program can work legally and remain in the United States for a predetermined time which can be extended by DHS depending on the continuing conditions from their country of origin under which they were granted status. Status relative to specific countries is determined on the advice of the president to the Department of Homeland Security.

Presently, the lack of elected officials and political instability, along with a mostly nonexistent central government, has allowed rightwing paramilitary death squads and gangs armed with US weapons smuggled in to take control of large portions of the country, “burning, raping and terrorizing the population.” Violence is now so pervasive throughout the country that the State Department warns Americans in its highest Red, Level: 4 Travel Advisory “…not travel to Haiti due to kidnappings, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.” Furthermore 5.7 million Haitians, roughly half its population, are suffering from acute food insecurity in a country with 1.4 million internally displaced people who also lack housing.

The above description illustrates the defiance for the Immigration Act along with the callous disregard of existing conditions and racist indifference to human welfare by the Trump regime. In addition, it highlight’s Noem’s merciless determination that organizers frame “is just as much of a violent attack on human rights as the ICE raids across the US.” Clearly, deportations would place returning refugees in grave danger in an exceptionally unstable nation in direct conflict with the very criteria that the TPS program is intended to protect refugees from.

Unfortunately, Haitians are not the only ones affected, as the TPS program has already ended for some refugees from Venezuela. Meanwhile, protection for Somali refugees will remain in place until March 17, 2026, while deportations for those from Myanmar have been temporarily spared by a judge’s ruling that postponed the program’s expiration.

This entire chapter is nothing new to Haitian TPS program participants who, during the first Trump administration in 2017, faced the same termination of their TPS status when it was determined that the extraordinary conditions that warranted the designation were “no longer present,” and they were encouraged to self-deport. Now, faced with a similar situation, those in the TPS program must again await their fate as their cases move through the courts.

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

© 2026 nuzeink all rights reserved worldwide