Days after lawyers for Haitian TPS holders urged the D.C. Circuit to leave their protection in place, Justice Department attorneys filed their reply on Thursday, pressing the appeals court to lift the district court order that has shielded them from deportation since February — and to do it now, rather than wait for the Supreme Court’s judgment later this month.
The Justice Department told a federal appeals court on Thursday that Haitian TPS holders have no legal claim to the protection they currently hold, describing the weeks remaining before their status ends as “a windfall of additional time.”
The filing is the government’s reply brief in Miot v. Trump — its last word before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decides whether to let deportations begin immediately or wait for the Supreme Court’s paperwork to catch up.
The dispute is narrower than it sounds, and CTN readers should understand its true scope.
The Supreme Court settled the main question on June 25 in Mullin v. Doe, holding that the district court erred in delaying the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation. That fight is over. The government won it.
What remains is timing — roughly two weeks of it.
A Supreme Court ruling does not take effect the moment it is announced. It takes effect when the Court issues its judgment, and the Court sets that date at least 32 days out, meaning on or after July 27. Until then, the district court’s order technically remains in effect, and Haitian TPS holders remain protected.
The government does not want to wait. It is asking the appeals court to lift the order now.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Welch, writing for a team that includes U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, made four arguments.
The order was always illegal. The brief opens by asserting that the district court’s order “never should have issued” and has been wrongly in effect for more than five months. The government casts every additional day as a continuing injury to the executive branch.
The court can act now. Plaintiffs argued that the appeals court lacked jurisdiction until the Supreme Court’s judgment arrived. The government calls this “meritless,” reasoning by analogy: a district court can pause its own order even after an appeal strips it of authority over the merits. It quotes Justice Neil Gorsuch — every federal court possesses, in its “traditional toolkit,” the power to temporarily pause an order.
The 32 days mean nothing. Plaintiffs framed the waiting period as the Supreme Court’s deliberate choice. The government reframes it as an “administrative default” that exists solely to allow a losing party to seek rehearing—and points out that the plaintiffs have not said they intend to seek any.
The Supreme Court already found that the government is harmed. The brief notes that the high court twice concluded, in earlier TPS cases, that the government suffers irreparable harm when TPS terminations are frozen. Those rulings, it argues, control here.
The language that should be read closely
Two passages in the filing reveal how the government thinks about the people at the center of this case.
The first is a quotation the Justice Department selected to open its brief — a 1999 Supreme Court line stating that postponing “justifiable deportation,” whether in hope of a status change or simply to extend an unlawful stay, is often the main object of resistance to removal proceedings.
That is the frame the government has chosen: not families fighting for their lives, but litigants stalling.
The second is the brief’s own characterization. TPS holders, it argues, “had no entitlement to retain work authorization or protection from removal” once the termination took effect, and have “no legally protectable interest in a windfall of additional time.”
A windfall. For a nurse’s aide in Boston, roughly two weeks of legal work authorization before it disappears.
The brief adds that plaintiffs “remain free to pursue any other immigration relief for which they may be eligible” — a line that will read differently to anyone who has attempted to navigate the asylum backlog.
On the question of chaos
Plaintiffs had warned that abruptly ending protection would cause chaos for families, employers, and the healthcare system that depends on Haitian workers.
The government’s answer is essentially: that is your doing.
Any chaos, the brief argues, flows from the plaintiffs’ own lawsuit and from a district court that defied an express prohibition on judicial review. It notes that Congress set the minimum notice period for a TPS termination and that Haitian TPS holders have been on notice since November 28, 2025, when the termination was published in the Federal Register.
For the roughly 350,000 Haitians who have built lives, careers, and families here under this protection, the government’s position is now on the record in plain terms: whatever time is left is not theirs by right. It is a windfall.
Haitian TPS holders with questions about their individual situations should consult a licensed immigration attorney or a representative accredited by the U.S. Department of Justice. This article explains a legal filing and is not legal advice.
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Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. The French and Haitian Creole versions are produced using AI translation, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio. Readers and listeners should rely on the English text where any discrepancy arises.
