President Trump’s far-out campaign claim that Haitian migrants in Ohio were dining on dogs is a key piece of evidence as his opponents move to stymie his immigration agenda in the courts.
Immigration rights activists say those comments and other remarks complaining about Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, show the president and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have an “animus” toward Haitians, Venezuelans and migrants in general.
Those sentiments taint the administration’s decisions, including Ms. Noem’s attempt to roll back a last-minute decision by her Biden predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, to extend Temporary Protected Status, a deportation amnesty, for another 18 months for Venezuelans.
The challengers cited Mr. Trump’s remarks during the campaign when he said Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” and “eating the pets of the people that live” in the city.
The challengers also pointed to remarks comparing some immigrants to snakes, calling migrant gang members “animals,” complaining that some of those coming are “not people, in my opinion,” and suggesting some migrants kill because “it’s in their genes.”
“From his candidacy for his first term as president through the present, President Trump has repeatedly denigrated people perceived to be non-white immigrants,” the National TPS Alliance and several Venezuelan TPS holders said in a lawsuit asking a judge to halt Ms. Noem’s TPS rollback.
The case raises thorny questions about a president’s words and how they affect how courts view official policy.
Mr. Trump deployed his claim that migrants in Springfield were eating dogs during his campaign debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Ms. Harris laughed off the claim, and fact-checkers said that, aside from local rumors, they had found no evidence of the practice.
As for Ms. Noem, the challengers pointed to her comments that Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members were “dirtbags” and her adoption of Mr. Trump’s claim that other countries “didn’t send us their best” as evidence that she has compromised in her decision-making.
The fights are in many ways a repeat of the first Trump administration when the president, in a closed-door meeting, allegedly declared nations with TPS designations to be “s—-hole countries.”
That quickly became a part of legal challenges to the president’s immigration changes, particularly his attempt to end TPS designations for El Salvador, Nicaragua, Sudan and Haiti.
Challengers to Mr. Trump said his comments revealed a “racial and national-origin animus” that made his actions a violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Some TPS legal challenges from his first term were not resolved until last year.
The Supreme Court never ruled on those TPS cases. It did take up another case arguing that the president held a racial animus toward some migrants based on his travel ban policy, which applied to some countries with heavy Muslim populations.
Although some justices said Mr. Trump’s intemperate words could be used against him in court, the majority rejected that approach.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said a president’s actions had to be taken on their face, and if they could be read to show a neutral approach, they survived scrutiny, regardless of the president’s heedless words.
Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an attorney for the TPS Alliance, said the high court’s ruling showed deference to Mr. Trump on national security grounds.
He said the TPS situation is different.
“TPS does not involve the president, does not involve action in the name of national security, and does not involve people denied entry from abroad, so I think the deferential review applicable in Trump would not apply here,” Mr. Arulanantham told The Washington Times.
Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project, agreed that TPS is a Homeland Security Department decision, not a presidential decision. Still, she said it raises questions about why the president’s words would be considered a factor.
She said she expects the Trump administration to have to convince judges that the president can end TPS and has a firm case.
“There’s no question that an administration should be able to end an administrative program that’s called ‘Temporary’ Protected Status,” she said.
Ms. Jenks said Mr. Trump’s comments about gang members and criminals weren’t describing all migrants but rather some specific problems that arose from record levels of illegal immigration.
“He’s using those as examples of the out-of-control system that Biden and Mayorkas put in place, and he is taking steps to end that abuse of the system,” Ms. Jenks said.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said some lower courts will be more open to the animus argument than others. What ultimately will matter is what the Supreme Court decides.
“Maybe the Supreme Court’s more reluctant,” he said. “A lot of Trump’s strategy is not aimed at the lower courts. I think a lot of what he’s done has been squarely aimed at the Supreme Court.”
Still, he said, Mr. Trump would be in a better legal position if he could constrain his words and deny his opponents extra ammunition.
“Plaintiffs are going to capitalize on that if they can,” he said.
The Times reached out to Homeland Security for this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.