A group of Haitians with temporary protected status is challenging the Trump administration’s end of legal protections from deportation for nationals of Haiti.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by five beneficiaries of TPS on Wednesday in federal court in the District of Columbia. The suit argues that returning Haitians to a nation being overtaken by gangs puts them at risk, that the decision by Homeland Security Secretary Krisiti Noem to end the deportation protections for up to more than a half-million Haitians did not go through the review process required by Congress, and that the move was based on racial animus toward Haitians.

“The termination of Haiti’s TPS designation is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, not in accordance with law, in excess of statutory authority, without observance of procedure required by law, and contrary to constitutional rights because it was motivated by unlawful discriminatory animus,” the lawsuit said.

During his 2024 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump made numerous statements demonstrating his discriminatory attitude against Haitians, the suit said, highlighting his false accusations about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their American neighbors’ pets.

The group is being represented by the same lawyers who filed another suit – and won – earlier this year after Noem announced a six-month roll-back of Haiti’s TPS designation.

The law firms are Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt, Just Futures Law, Giskan Solotaroff & Anderson and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner.

“Haiti is a nation in chaos. Even Secretary Noem admits that. The decision to strip critical TPS protections despite the extraordinary conditions in Haiti is not just cruel, it’s also unlawful,” said Sejal Zota, legal director for Just Futures Law. “The administration cannot reverse-engineer the facts to justify its politically motivated decision to terminate.”

Countries in turmoil

In early July, a federal judge in New York ruled that Noem lacked the legal authority to reduce the time of Haitians’ TPS from 18 months to 12 months, and said the termination date for the current designation should remain Feb. 3, 2026. DHS finally relented but also argued that it disagreed with the judge’s ruling. Weeks earlier, the agency had also announced that once the designation ends, TPS for to a half million Haitians currently living in the United States would come to an end.

The designation, given to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake left more than 300,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless, is reserved for countries undergoing turmoil such as civil strife and natural disasters, and allows their nationals in the United States to remain here temporarily with eligibility to work.

Though a DHS spokesperson at the time of Noem’s termination announcement said the decision was made because conditions in Haiti had improved, that was not the official reason stated in the federal registry. Noem gave an argument based on “national interests,” arguing that TPS incentivizes unlawful migration. She also said an unspecified percentage of TPS holders in the U.S. were violent criminals.

The suit highlights her comments about the lack of safe conditions in Haiti, which it says should be used during a proper review process of whether to keep or end the designation.

“Secretary Noem’s termination notice emphasizes precisely how unsafe Haiti is. The termination notice explains, among other things, that ‘gang violence in Haiti persists as armed groups operate with impunity, enabled by a weak or effectively absent central government,’ and that the gangs inflict on Haiti ‘terror and violence, including rape and other forms of sexual violence,’ ” the suit states.

This is not the first time Haitians have challenged Trump’s on his attempt to terminate TPS for Haiti. During his first term, a number of lawsuits were filed and lawyers prevailed.

Just as they argued the first time, lawyers in the current lawsuit highlight a number of racially charged comments the president and his allies have made about Haitians. They also underscore how armed gangs in Haiti are driving displacements and hunger as they target schools and hospitals.

“The long history of racial and national origin discrimination against Haitians must end here and now,” said attorney Ira Kurzban. “Haitians in the U.S. are the quintessential example that motivated Congress to establish temporary protected status in 1990. The administration, by false statements and a misapplication of the law, should not be permitted to render that protection a nullity.”

Deaths and homelessness

Last year, gang violence contributed to the deaths of more than 5,000 Haitians; this year, 4,000 have died, according to the United Nations. There are currently more than 1.3 million people who have been forced to flee their homes, many of them forced to live in soiled encampments.

The lawsuit says “the U.S. State Department advises American citizens: ‘Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited healthcare;’ it notes that ‘Haiti has been under a State of Emergency since March 2024’ and that ‘(c)rimes involving firearms are common in Haiti,’ including robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom.”

The five plaintiffs represent a cross-section of the Haitians who currently hold TPS. While some arrived in the U.S. fleeing the gang violence that erupted after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, others have been here since the earthquake.

Among the plaintiffs is Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a 34-year-old homeowner in Springfield, Ohio, who has held TPS status since 2021. Dorsainvil, who was a doctor in Haiti, works as a registered nurse. Another plaintiff, Fritz Miot, 32, has held TPS since 2011. He’s completing his fourth year of graduate science studies and is on track to obtain a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Loma Linda University in California.

The suit says Miot has juvenile onset diabetes, which requires him to take daily insulin injections and appointments with medical specialists. “In Haiti, neither the insulin nor the specialists would be readily accessible, if at all, even if he could afford them,” the suit said. “Mr. Miot’s loss of TPS and work authorization and his deportation to Haiti would endanger his health, all the while curtailing his research, graduate studies, promising future in neuroscience.”

A third plaintiff, Marlene Gail Noble, was abandoned as an infant in Haiti, has been in foster care and was the victim of abusive adoptive parents in the U.S., the suit claims. She was first brought to the U.S. at the age of two by a faith-based Florida organization after contracting tuberculosis. The disease caused her spinal cord to collapse and resulted in her being unable to sit, move or function without additional medical care.

She received spinal fusion surgery in Florida sometime in the early 1990s and was placed in the legal guardianship of a couple living in Pennsylvania. After at least three additional foster care placements, she was placed in the home of adoptive parents in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.

“Throughout her childhood, her humanitarian parole status was renewed each time before it expired, until approximately 2000 when she was nine years old,” the suit says.

While Noble believed, as a teenager and young adult, that she was legally in the U.S., she was not. “Ultimately, her adoptive parents were abusive to her, and she cut off all contact with them as a young adult,” the suit said. “In October 2023, after evaluating other options for pursuing legal status in the United States that were ultimately unavailable to her, she and her immigration attorney filed a TPS application.”

Brian Concannon, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a collaborator on the case, said “ending TPS uproots Haitians who are legally in the U.S. and contributing to communities and workplaces. “It sends them to a Haiti controlled by gangs armed with U.S. weapons, suffering from famine and economic disaster,” he said.

Contrary to the narrative the Trump administration has pushed while trying to enforce his mass deportation campaign, TPS holders have clean records, the suit said.

“The statute expressly excludes individuals with more than one misdemeanor conviction from its protection. Nor are they a drain on public resources. The statute expressly prevents TPS holders from obtaining federal public benefits,” the lawsuit says. “TPS holders’ labor and civic engagement have revitalized communities across America, from Brooklyn, New York and Springfield, Ohio, to Miami, Florida, and numerous places in-between. Haitian TPS holders have a justified, statutorily guaranteed expectation that Haiti’s TPS designation will remain in place until lawfully terminated.”

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