SILVER SPRING, Maryland — An April 11 ruling by a New York federal judge blocking the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians is the second to prevent the administration from ending the program while legal challenges continue. The ruling affirmed arguments made by CLINIC and other advocates for TPS that the administration did not follow the statutory process in terminating TPS for Haiti.

U.S. District Judge William Kuntz of the Eastern District of New York said in his ruling in Saget v. Trump that there was evidence that those challenges would succeed and that the federal government’s process in deciding to terminate the program was politically motivated, not based on the law.

He said Elaine Duke, then-acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security “violated the TPS statute because she did not conduct periodic review in accordance with the dictates of the statutes--her decision was preordained and pretextual, and it was made in part due to political influence. Acting Secretary Duke’s decision was not purely evidence-based as the statute requires. In fact, it ignored much of the evidence in the record.”

This is the second court order temporarily preventing the termination of TPS for Haiti. In October, a San Francisco judge’s injunction blocked the termination of TPS for Haiti, El Salvador, Sudan and Nicaragua. In March, the Nepal and Honduras terminations were also blocked by the courts.

CLINIC has called for Congress to provide permanent legislative protections for TPS holders. It also has called for congressional investigation of the administration’s actions in terminating TPS for countries that still pose grave risks to returning citizens who would be forced to leave the United States.