NAACP Sues Homeland Security Over Haiti Immigration Policy

The civil rights group NAACP’s legal arm said in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday the Trump administration’s decision to end a program that shields more than 58,000 Haitian immigrants from deportation discriminates on the basis of color. Haiti, devastated by natural disasters and a widespread cholera outbreak, is still recovering from the catastrophes and is “ill-prepared” to accept the immigrants, the lawsuit said.

"President Trump has made clear that he wishes to reduce the number of immigrants of color to the United States. The rescission of Haiti's (temporary protected status) is part of that agenda," the lawsuit said.

Filed in U.S. District Court of Maryland, the lawsuit claims the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision to rescind temporary protective status for Haitian immigrants, effective July 2019, was “irrational and discriminatory government action.” The lawsuit was filed by the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a separate entity from the NAACP since 1957.

TPS is an immigration status that is given to some countries experiencing dire circumstances, such as natural disasters, epidemics or war. It authorizes them to work and live in the United States without fear of deportation.

Haitians living in the United States received TPS in 2010 after one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern history. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians were killed and millions more were left homeless in the earthquake that nearly destroyed Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Further hobbling Haiti’s recovery efforts were the cholera outbreak that killed thousands and continues to sicken people across the country, and Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 storm in October 2016 that killed more than 500 and left a path of devastation in its wake.

The Trump administration announced in November that Haitians living under the temporary status would have until July 2019 to get their affairs in order and return home. But officials didn’t tell people with the status how to go about renewing it.

The Jan. 18 announcement that TPS for Haitians would end automatically extended the work permits for Haitians on temporary protected status through July. But it also acknowledged "not all re-registrants will receive" new work authorization cards before the current ones expired on Monday, Jan. 22. It said Haitian workers will be able to simply show employers the agency's Jan. 18 notice as proof their work status is still valid until the new documents arrive.

The lawsuit, which claims Homeland Security intended to discriminate against Haitian immigrants living in the United States because of their race and national origin, was filed about two weeks after President Trump allegedly used a vulgarity to describe Haiti, El Salvador and Africa in a meeting with lawmakers on immigration policy.

“This is simple case,” Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The decision by the Department of Homeland Security to rescind TPS status for Haitian immigrants was infected by racial discrimination. Every step taken by the Department to reach this decision reveals that far from a rational and fact-based determination, this decision was driven by calculated, determined and intentional discrimination against Haitian immigrants.”

The cholera outbreak and Hurricane Matthew “exacerbated the dire situation created by the 2010 earthquake,” the lawsuit said, and led to the 2010 TPS designation and repeated extensions by the Department of Homeland Security that allowed Haitians to live and legally work in the United States without fear of deportation.

The most recent extension of TPS was in May 2017 by former Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, now the White House chief of staff. At the time, Kelly warned the Haitians living in America under TPS to either prepare to return to Haiti or find another way to seek legal residence in the United States.

The lawsuit said that “despite persistent food insecurity, a housing shortage, and a cholera epidemic, and despite a formal extension request from the Haitian government and various American officials from across the political spectrum, DHS terminated TPS for Haitians in November 2017, with a delayed effective date of July 22, 2019. As such, an estimated 58,000 Haitians with TPS may face deportation to a country that is ill-prepared to receive them.”

The petition quotes Haitian activist Marleine Bastien, who lives in south Florida, who said deportion “is going to be a disaster for the 58,000 families in the U.S. and a disaster for Haiti.”

Homeland Security officials have said protected status is no longer justified for the Haitian immigrants, a decision the lawsuit states is “demonstrably spurious” and “grounded in longstanding and particularly noxious anti-Black stereotypes.”

The lawsuit cites a 2017 report from The Associated Press detailing U.S. immigration officials' attempts to find data on Haitians with protected status committing crimes or receiving public assistance. It also quotes separate reports that Trump said thousands of Haitians who came to the U.S. in 2017 "all have AIDS," the vulgarity allegedly used to describe Haiti and candidate Trump’s comments on immigration, including statements about "bad hombres" he would expel from the country.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in an email Thursday to The Associated Press that the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

This story includes reporting from The Associated Press.

Image: This Jan. 15, 2018, file photo shows Haitian community supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, to protest remarks made by President Donald Trump about Haiti. (Damon Higgins/Palm Beach Post via AP, File)