Following a January 28, 2026, ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem exceeded her statutory authority in her partial vacatur of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, on February 2, 2026, a district court granted plaintiffs—five Haitian TPS beneficiaries—a stay of Secretary Noem’s decision to end Haitian TPS pending the outcome of litigation.
The court found plaintiffs’ assertion that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants “substantially likely.” Quoting Secretary Noem’s statements to the effect that Haiti and certain other “damn” countries have been “flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” the court noted that plaintiffs in this case include a neuroscientist, a software engineer, a laboratory assistant, a college economics major, and a full-time registered nurse—far from fitting Secretary Noem’s description. The court also observed that Secretary Noem made the decision to cancel Haitian TPS without consulting with appropriate agencies and ignoring Congress’s requirement that she review conditions in Haiti after such consultations. The court noted that she also downplayed the danger to Haitians of returning to Haiti while the Department of State updated its travel advisory in July 2025 warning U.S. travelers not to go to Haiti due to security risks including “kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision.
