A Biden-appointed federal judge has formally acknowledged that her order blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians is no longer in effect, a concession forced by the Supreme Court's sweeping ruling that courts cannot second-guess DHS decisions to end the program.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote in an order Wednesday that her earlier stay of the Department of Homeland Security's termination of Haiti's TPS designation "is no longer in effect," following the Supreme Court's decision in Mullin v. Doe and the D.C. Circuit's subsequent mandate. The acknowledgment removes the last judicial barrier that had kept the administration from moving forward on one of President Trump's signature immigration promises.
DHS had already declared Haiti's TPS designation terminated effective July 27, the date the D.C. Circuit issued its mandate carrying out the Supreme Court's ruling. Employment authorization documents issued under the designation are no longer valid, and the department has instructed employers to reverify the work authorization of affected employees.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that the TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional decisions to terminate TPS designations. The justices found the plaintiffs' equal protection challenge was unlikely to succeed, reversed the lower courts, and remanded the case for further proceedings. The ruling did not just clear the path for Haiti, it broadly stripped lower courts of the power to block TPS terminations for any country.
Haiti first received TPS after the country's devastating 2010 earthquake. The designation, meant as a short-term humanitarian shield, remained in place for sixteen years through multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican alike. The Biden administration went further, expanding and extending TPS protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians already living in the United States.
Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reviewed conditions in Haiti and determined the country no longer met the statutory requirements for the program. She announced the administration's decision to terminate the designation, arguing that TPS had been extended well beyond its intended temporary purpose. That decision triggered the legal challenge that eventually reached the Supreme Court.
An estimated 330,000 to 350,000 Haitians in the U.S. had been covered by the designation. With the injunction now lifted and the termination in effect, those individuals no longer hold the work permits and deportation protections that TPS provided.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin made the administration's posture plain. Breitbart reported Mullin's statement on the matter:
"These individuals can either self-deport or we'll arrest you and send you back. It's that simple."
DHS General Counsel James Percival pushed back on reports that Wednesday's order itself ended Haiti's TPS designation. He posted on X that the protections had already expired days earlier.
"Haiti TPS ended when the Supreme Court mandate issued on July 27."
Percival then offered a backhanded compliment to Judge Reyes, and a pointed critique of other federal judges still attempting to obstruct TPS terminations elsewhere.
"I will give Judge Reyes kudos though for taking the L with grace and not doing something bonkers like many of her colleagues."
That remark carried weight. Other Biden-appointed judges have continued to defy the Supreme Court's ruling on TPS, issuing new orders to shield protected-status holders from other countries even after the justices made clear that courts lack jurisdiction over these termination decisions.
The pattern has frustrated the administration and raised questions about whether some lower-court judges are substituting their own policy preferences for settled law. Reyes, at least, accepted the outcome without further resistance, a fact Percival evidently found noteworthy enough to highlight publicly.
The legal fight over Haiti's TPS designation did not play out in a political vacuum. Trump repeatedly campaigned on ending the Biden administration's expanded TPS protections for Haitians, and the issue became a centerpiece of the 2024 election.
Trump and his running mate JD Vance blamed Biden-era Haiti TPS policies for the influx of Haitian migrants into Springfield, Ohio, where residents raised concerns about traffic safety, strained public services, and cultural clashes. Trump referenced residents' claims that migrants were taking ducks and geese from parks and eating household pets, claims that drew intense media scrutiny but kept the issue of unchecked TPS expansion in the national spotlight.
The Supreme Court's ruling validated the core legal argument the administration had made throughout: that Congress gave the executive branch the authority to end TPS designations, and that courts have no business overriding those decisions absent a genuine constitutional violation.
Opponents 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. They argue that conditions on the ground make it dangerous to send Haitians back. But the Supreme Court's ruling effectively removed that argument from the courtroom. The remaining litigation centers narrowly on whether the administration acted with unconstitutional racial animus in terminating the designation, a claim the justices already signaled was unlikely to succeed.
Judge Reyes's concession matters beyond the Haiti case. Federal courts across the country had become a favored venue for immigration advocates seeking to block Trump administration policies, and TPS terminations were among the most reliably enjoined actions. The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Doe cut that strategy off at the root by declaring that the TPS statute itself forecloses judicial review.
Yet not every judge has followed Reyes's lead. Just The News reported that some federal judges have continued to resist, issuing new orders to block TPS terminations even after the Supreme Court's ruling. That ongoing defiance has drawn sharp criticism from the administration and from legal commentators who argue that lower courts are undermining the separation of powers.
The First Circuit has already backed the administration on TPS terminations in a separate case, adding to the growing wall of appellate authority supporting the executive branch's position. And some Democratic officials have gone in the opposite direction entirely, with New York City's leadership pledging to shield Haitian and Syrian immigrants from enforcement regardless of what the courts have ruled.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
A program designed as a temporary lifeline after a natural disaster lasted sixteen years and covered hundreds of thousands of people. When the administration finally ended it, courts tried to stop it. When the Supreme Court said the courts had no authority to do so, one judge accepted the ruling. The question now is how many others will follow, and how long taxpayers and communities will wait for the rest to catch up.