A federal judge has acknowledged that her injunction blocking the Trump administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status for an estimated 330,000 to 350,000 Haitians is no longer in effect, a significant legal victory for the president's immigration agenda.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a written order Wednesday confirming that her earlier stay of the Department of Homeland Security's termination of Haiti's TPS designation has no legal force. The concession followed the Supreme Court's ruling in Mullin v. Doe and a subsequent mandate from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which together stripped the lower court of authority to block the administration's move. Fox News Digital reported the order Wednesday.
The result is straightforward: the legal wall that immigrant-rights plaintiffs had erected around Haiti's TPS program has collapsed, and DHS is now free to enforce the termination it announced months ago. For the roughly 330,000 to 350,000 Haitians who relied on the designation to live and work lawfully in the United States, the employment authorization documents they held under TPS are no longer valid.
The dominoes began falling in June, when the Supreme Court ruled in Mullin v. Doe that the TPS statute bars judicial review of the administration's non-constitutional decisions to terminate a country's designation. The justices also found that the plaintiffs' equal protection challenge, their claim that the termination was racially motivated, was unlikely to succeed. The court reversed the lower courts and sent the case back for further proceedings.
That ruling was one of several high-profile Supreme Court cases with direct implications for the president's second-term agenda. On July 27, the Supreme Court's mandate formally issued, and DHS announced that Haiti's TPS designation was terminated effective that date.
DHS General Counsel James Percival pushed back on media reports that suggested Wednesday's order from Judge Reyes was itself the event that ended Haiti's TPS. Percival posted on X:
"Haiti TPS ended when the Supreme Court mandate issued on July 27. I will give Judge Reyes kudos though for taking the L with grace and not doing something bonkers like many of her colleagues."
The remark was pointed. Federal judges across the country have drawn sharp criticism from the administration for issuing broad injunctions against executive immigration actions. That Reyes accepted the Supreme Court's ruling without attempting to maneuver around it earned her a rare compliment from the administration's own top lawyer, a measure of how contentious the relationship between the executive branch and the federal bench has become.
Haiti first received TPS after a devastating earthquake in 2010. The designation was meant to be temporary, a shield for nationals already in the United States whose home country had suffered a disaster or armed conflict so severe that safe return was impossible. But "temporary" stretched across sixteen years and multiple administrations, with each successive White House extending the program rather than forcing the question of whether conditions in Haiti still warranted it.
The Biden administration went further, expanding and extending TPS protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians already living in the country. That expansion became a flashpoint during the 2024 presidential campaign, particularly after residents of Springfield, Ohio, raised concerns about strained public services, traffic safety, and cultural friction tied to a rapid influx of Haitian migrants. Then-candidate Trump and his running mate JD Vance blamed the Biden administration's Haiti TPS policies directly for the disruption in Springfield.
Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reviewed conditions in Haiti and determined the country no longer met the statutory requirements for TPS. She announced the administration's decision to terminate the designation, arguing the humanitarian program had been extended well beyond its intended temporary purpose. That decision triggered the legal challenge that ultimately reached the Supreme Court.
The administration's position was bolstered by a broader pattern of court victories on immigration enforcement that have steadily cleared legal obstacles to the president's agenda.
With the injunction lifted and the Supreme Court mandate in place, DHS wasted no time on the practical consequences. The department declared that employment authorization documents issued under Haiti's TPS designation are no longer valid. Employers were instructed to reverify the work authorization of affected employees, a step that, for many Haitian workers, will mean the end of lawful employment in the United States.
The New York Post characterized the development as a major immigration victory for the president, who campaigned heavily on rolling back Biden-era TPS expansions.
Former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey discussed on Fox News how the agency reportedly plans to handle deportations of Haitian migrants whose TPS has expired. Details of that enforcement plan were not laid out in the reporting, but the direction is clear: the administration intends to follow through.
Meanwhile, Congress has been moving to give ICE the resources to carry out large-scale enforcement. The House recently passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement package that locks in ICE funding through the end of the president's term, a legislative backstop designed to ensure enforcement does not stall for lack of money.
The underlying lawsuit is not entirely finished. The remaining litigation centers on whether the administration acted with unconstitutional racial animus in terminating Haiti's TPS designation, the equal protection argument the Supreme Court said was unlikely to succeed. That question was sent back to the lower courts for further proceedings.
But the practical force of that remaining claim is limited. The Supreme Court has already said the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on it, and the injunction that gave the argument its teeth, Judge Reyes's stay, is gone. Whatever proceedings follow will unfold against the backdrop of a terminated program and an administration actively enforcing the termination.
Critics of the termination have pointed to the State Department's own Level 4 "Do Not Travel" advisory for Haiti, which cites widespread gang violence, kidnappings, and civil unrest. The argument is that conditions on the ground remain too dangerous for deportees. The administration's counter is built into the program's own name: Temporary Protected Status was never meant to be permanent residency by another name.
The broader tension between the courts and the executive branch on immigration policy has played out across multiple fronts this term. The Supreme Court has navigated contentious questions about the limits of presidential power on immigration, sometimes siding with the administration and sometimes drawing boundaries.
The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment before publication.
For sixteen years, a "temporary" program shielded hundreds of thousands of people from a legal reckoning with their immigration status. The Supreme Court just reminded everyone what "temporary" is supposed to mean, and the lower courts, for once, listened.