Judge rips Trump’s ‘derogatory’ comments about Haitians eating pets and blocks deportation for more than 1 million migrants – UK Times

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from canceling deportation protections for roughly 1 million people from Venezuela and Haiti, dealing yet another blow to Homeland Security’s attempts to strip legal status for tens of thousands of immigrants.

California District Judge Edward Chen determined that Secretary Kristi Noem had illegally and arbitrarily revoked temporary humanitarian protections on baseless, pretextual grounds with “no evidence of any reasoned decision making.”

To support Donald Trump’s plans to remove millions of people from the country, administration officials moved to revoke Temporary Protected Status designations for several countries, which stripped legal immigration status for tens of thousands of immigrants who had already been granted permission to live and work in the United States after fleeing disasters in their home countries.

In his ruling on Friday, Chen argued that racial and ethnic animus “can reasonably be inferred from the discriminatory statements made by Secretary Noem and/or President Trump alone,” from Noem calling Venezuelans “dirt bags” to Trump claiming that Haitians are “eating the pets” of Springfield, Ohio.

Even if the government could defend those remarks, “a reasonable jury could still infer racial animus” from Noem’s statements, Chen said.

“As for President Trump, his comments included derogatory and baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio – TPS holders – were eating people’s pets,” he added.

Chen also noted that reports from Trump’s first administration that claimed he called Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “s***hole countries.”

The judge’s order arrived just days after the administration announced it was ending temporary protections granted in 2021 for more than 250,000 more Venezuelans.

Congress created the TPS program in 1990 to provide temporary immigration protections for people fleeing war, natural disasters and “extraordinary and temporary” conditions in their home countries. Beneficiaries are allowed to apply for renewable work permits and protections against deportation.

Chen’s order maintains Biden-era TPS extensions that run until February 2026 for Haitians and October 2026 for Venezuelans.

Noem has argued that conditions improved in those countries and that it was no longer in the U.S. interest for immigrants to stay in the United States on those temporary protections.

Chen’s earlier decision to block the government from ending TPS was later reversed by the Supreme Court without explanation after the government’s emergency appeal.

The case is likely to land back at the Supreme Court.

Losing those protections would “inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States,” Chen wrote in March.

Noem’s decision-making “smacks of racism” and is likely “motivated by unconstitutional animus,” he wrote at the time.

In his 69-page decision on Friday, Chen argued that Noem’s efforts to revoke protections threatened to send immigrants “back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

Noem’s sweeping revocations are “extraordinary and unusual,” Chen wrote.

“Even if she had such authority, there is no genuine dispute that she exceeded that authority,” he wrote.

A spokesperson for Homeland Security called Chen an “activist judge” and said the TPS program “has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program,” made “dangerous” by Joe Biden’s administration.

“While this order delays justice, Secretary Noem will use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent.

“Under God, the people rule,” the spokesperson added. “Unelected activist judges cannot stop the will of the American people for a safe and secure homeland.”