The U.S. government has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in its effort to end humanitarian deportation protections for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States, despite ongoing violence in Haiti that has displaced more than a million people.
In an emergency filing last Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the court to lift a lower court decision that blocked the administration’s move to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians. The judge who halted the policy found the administration’s action was likely motivated in part by “racial animus.”
TPS provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization for migrants whose home countries are facing extraordinary circumstances such as natural disasters or armed conflict. Haitians were first granted the status in 2010 under former President Barack Obama after a devastating earthquake struck the country.
Since returning to office in January 2025, the administration has pursued a policy of expanded deportations and has moved to strip certain migrants of humanitarian protections that had previously allowed them to remain legally in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security has sought to end TPS designations for roughly a dozen countries, arguing the program was always intended to be temporary.
In its filing, the Justice Department said lower courts were repeatedly blocking major executive policies in ways that harm national interests and foreign relations.
“Unless the court resolves the merits of these challenges — issues that have now been ventilated in courts nationwide — this unsustainable cycle will repeat again and again, spawning more competing rulings and competing views of what to make of this court’s interim orders,” the department wrote.
The latest extension of TPS for Haitians was granted under former President Joe Biden, whose administration cited “simultaneous economic, security, political and health crises” in Haiti, including escalating gang violence and the absence of a functioning national government. That extension allowed Haitians in the United States to retain their protected status through Feb. 3, 2026.
Conditions in Haiti remain severe. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 1.4 million Haitians have been displaced by violence and instability.
The U.S. Department of State currently advises Americans not to travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest and limited health care services.
