A federal judge on Wednesday officially allowed the Trump administration to end temporary deportation protection for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, marking the final step, for now, in a months-long case that made its way to the Supreme Court.
The announcement from US District Judge Ana Reyes comes more than a month after the high court reversed a ruling she made earlier this year that halted the government’s plans to end a program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Haitians who fled the country in recent years amid political unrest and on the heels of natural disasters.
“The court’s order, which had stayed the effective date of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Termination of the Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status pending judicial review, is no longer in effect,” Reyes wrote in a brief order.
The order puts to bed a lingering question that had caused confusion among the roughly 350,000 Haitians benefiting from the program. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in late June, it remained unclear when, exactly, the protections would be officially gone.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement had already started to target TPS holders, including Haitians, whose status was set to expire, according to two sources familiar with the plans. Wednesday’s order paves the way for the administration to start deporting them back to a country that the State Department has repeatedly warned is dangerous and unstable.
