A group of civil rights attorneys filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday, alleging they overstepped their authority in declaring an early end to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants living in the U.S.
According to Lawyers for Civil Rights, the lawsuit aims to block a move by Noem to revoke the protected status of Venezuelan migrants as of April 2, and that of Haitian migrants by August 3. While both groups were already set to lose their protected status at some point in 2026, the status conferred to them or extended under the Biden Administration cannot legally be revoked early by a following presidential administration, the attorneys behind the lawsuit said.
“The TPS statute does not authorize the Secretary to pull the rug out from under vulnerable TPS recipients and rescind an extension that has already been granted; she simply has no statutory authority to do so,” they told the U.S. District Court in Boston, according to court filings.
Besides not having the authority to make change in the first place, the speed of Noem’s decision to end TPS status in these cases “provides an independent ground for invalidating” the early termination plan even if it were allowed, according to the lawsuit.
“They are not evidence-based determinations based on the criteria required under the TPS statute, but rather are
pre-ordained conclusions motivated by racial bias and improper political influence. The timing alone — with the first of the decisions coming mere days after Defendant Noem’s confirmation as DHS Secretary — demonstrates that the decisions are not the reasoned determinations required by law,” they wrote.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three immigration advocacy groups — Haitians Americans United, Inc., Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, and UndocuBlack Network — as well as four “affected individuals.” According to LCR, it is the first case filed nationally seeking to rollback Noem’s TPS decision. Named as defendants are the Department of Homeland Security, the president, and the DHS secretary.
The case was brought in Boston, the lawyers say, because the region is home to one of the largest Haitian populations in the nation. These particular groups, according to Mirian Albert, a Senior Attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights, are being targeted because of who they are, not because of anything they have done wrong.
“TPS is a critical lifeline for immigrants who have fled extreme violence, political upheaval, and natural disasters in their home countries. The decision to undermine TPS for Haiti and Venezuela is driven by racial bias and has no basis in the realities these communities face. The Constitution prohibits government actions based on racial animus,” Albert said.
A spokesperson for DHS said along with Noem’s February 20 announcement on revocation of protected status for Haitian immigrants, that the Biden Administration and former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “attempted to tie the hands of the Trump administration by extending Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status by 18 months — far longer than justified or necessary.” The spokesperson added that the Trump Administration simply won’t allow the system to be abused anymore.
“We are returning integrity to the TPS system, which has been abused and exploited by illegal aliens for decades. President Trump and Secretary Noem are returning TPS to its original status: temporary,” they said.
This is not the first time a Trump Administration has taken aim at the TPS program. In 2018, during his first term, Trump attempted to end TPS status granted to migrants from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Sudan, following natural disasters or political upheaval in those countries.
Trump’s attempt was blocked following a lawsuit by LCR that resulted in the issuance of a preliminary injunction by U.S. District of California Senior District Judge Edward Chen, who found that Trump’s decision to abandon protected status for those countries was the result of a “predetermined presidential agenda” and not based in evidence, while there was apparently ample “evidence that President Trump harbors an animus against non-white, non-European aliens.”
In 2020, a split three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Trump administration’s plan, but the full Ninth Circuit vacated the panel opinion in 2023 and ordered the entire case to be reheard by the en banc court.
The Biden Administration attempted to see the case dismissed as moot, but plaintiff attorneys, including those from LCR, appealed, warning the court that “if this case is dismissed now, nothing would prevent a future administration (or even this one) from doing the same thing again.”
Victoria Miranda, Senior Attorney at LCR, said that the Trump Administration’s most recent attempt at ending protected status for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants “isn’t just wrong—it’s illegal.”
“We will not let racist and xenophobic policies destabilize Black and Latino immigrant communities,” she said.
The lawsuit comes as Massachusetts continues to operate under a declaration of emergency surrounding an influx of migrant families to the state, and as its emergency shelter system continues to operate near peak capacity.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
