By Nate Raymond
Feb 2 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from revoking legal protections for more than 350,000 Haitians, preventing their potential deportation to a country that has been ravaged by gang violence.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., halted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's effort to terminate Haiti's Temporary Protected Status. The move would have taken effect on Wednesday despite spiraling violence there that has displaced
more than 1.4 million people.
Reyes, who was appointed by Democratic former President Joe Biden, issued the ruling in a class action lawsuit brought by Haitians seeking to stop the administration from exposing them to deportation by ending their legal status.
TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has moved to end the status for about a dozen countries as part of President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration, saying TPS was always meant to be temporary and not a "de facto amnesty program."
The department first designated Haiti for TPS in 2010, after a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the country. The U.S. has repeatedly extended the status, most recently by the Biden administration in July 2024.
The department at that time extended TPS for another 18 months through February 3, 2026, citing "simultaneous economic, security, political, and health crises" in Haiti, fueled by gangs and a lack of a functioning government.
Shortly after Trump took office, his administration tried to curtail those humanitarian protections for Haitians in February 2025, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to truncate the Biden-era extension so it would expire that August.
After a federal judge in New York in July ruled Noem lacked statutory authority to do so, her department in November moved to terminate Haiti's TPS status, saying there were "no extraordinary and temporary conditions" in the country that would prevent migrants from returning.
UNICEF estimated in October that over 6 million people - more than half the population, including 3.3 million children - need humanitarian assistance.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and additional reporting by Ismail Shakil, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Lisa Shumaker)
