The Trump administration announced Monday it intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in Washington blocked its effort to terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States.
The move escalates a legal battle that has repeatedly pitted the administration against the federal judiciary over who holds the final authority to end immigration protections for migrants from vulnerable nations.
In a letter sent to the Supreme Court on Monday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer accused lower court judges of showing “persistent disregard” for the high court’s earlier emergency-docket decisions. He also said the administration plans to formally appeal the D.C. Circuit ruling protecting Haitian TPS holders — the latest in a series of court losses that have slowed key elements of the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
“This is part of a cycle that looks likely to repeat again and again unless and until this Court steps in,” Sauer wrote, according to the Associated Press.
The D.C. Circuit Ruling: A 2-1 Decision
The appeal follows a 2-1 ruling issued Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which refused the administration’s emergency request to pause a February 2 order blocking DHS from ending Haiti’s TPS designation.
The majority opinion, written by Circuit Judges Florence Pan and Brad Garcia — both appointed by President Joe Biden — found that returning Haitians to their homeland would expose them to severe dangers. The court cited Haiti’s “collapsing rule of law” and the country’s lack of access to life-sustaining medical care as grounds for keeping the protections in place. “The government’s failure to meet its burden of demonstrating irreparable harm alone justifies denying emergency relief that would upend the status quo and increase uncertainty while this appeal proceeds,” the court stated.
The dissenting judge, Justin Walker — a Trump appointee — argued that the Haitian TPS case and the earlier Supreme Court litigation over Venezuelan TPS were “the legal equivalent of fraternal, if not identical, twins,” and that the majority’s reasoning was inconsistent with existing precedent.
The February 2 ruling the appeals court upheld was issued by U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes of the District of Columbia. Judge Reyes had found that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s November 2025 decision to terminate Haitian TPS likely violated the procedural requirements of TPS law and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. Her ruling also cited what she described as likely “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” as a factor in the decision.
The Trump administration argues that the federal government holds sole and unreviewable authority to terminate TPS designations and that courts have no business second-guessing those decisions. DHS has framed Haiti’s TPS as an abuse of the program’s original intent.
“Temporary means temporary, and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench,” a DHS spokesperson said after the February 2 ruling. Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, had also declared at the time: “Supreme Court, here we come.”
The administration points to two earlier Supreme Court decisions allowing it to proceed with terminating TPS for approximately 600,000 Venezuelans despite ongoing litigation as evidence that the high court agrees with its legal position. The Solicitor General now wants the Supreme Court to issue a broader ruling that would prevent lower courts from blocking TPS terminations across the board.
The Justice Department is seeking a ruling that would also cover protections for 6,100 Syrians, whose case Sauer had already appealed last month, along with the Haitian case now being escalated.
What Is at Stake for Haitians
The legal protections for Haitians under TPS were first granted in January 2010 in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people. The designation has been renewed multiple times since, most recently by the Biden administration in July 2024, which cited Haiti’s “simultaneous economic, security, political, and health crises” driven by gang violence and the absence of a functioning government.
According to the State Department’s own travel advisory, Americans are advised not to travel to Haiti for any reason due to threats of kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and severely limited healthcare. Haiti has been under a State of Emergency since March 2024.
Attorneys representing Haitian TPS holders have been direct about the consequences of termination. If the Supreme Court allows the program to end, they say, “people will almost certainly die.”
Judge Reyes made the stakes equally plain in her February ruling, writing: “Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable.”
A Broader Campaign to End TPS Nationwide
The Haitian case is part of a sweeping effort by the Trump administration to dismantle TPS protections across multiple nationalities. In addition to Haiti, DHS under Noem terminated protections for approximately 600,000 Venezuelans, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, 60,000 people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal, 6,100 Syrians, and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Several of those terminations are facing separate federal lawsuits.
The Supreme Court has sided with the administration on the Venezuelan TPS terminations, allowing those deportations to proceed while litigation continues. The administration is now betting the high court will extend that logic to Haitians and others.
A coalition of more than 175 former federal judges has weighed in on the other side, arguing that emergency-docket rulings are not settled law and that the Supreme Court should allow the normal appeals process to run its course rather than issuing sweeping rulings on the administration’s fast-tracked docket.
The appeal comes four days after President Trump fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and announced he would nominate Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace her.
Mullin is set to take over on March 31, 2026. The TPS cases — Haitian and otherwise — will be among the most consequential files waiting for the incoming secretary.
Whether Mullin will alter the course set by Noem on TPS terminations remains unclear. For the more than 350,000 Haitians whose legal status hangs in the balance, the answer may ultimately come from the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Source: Associated Press
