Haitian Temporary Protected Status remains in effect in mid-2026 because of a federal court order, and the Supreme Court is now deciding whether it stays that way. The Haiti TPS lawsuit currently before the justices, consolidated with a Syrian case under the name Mullin v. Doe, will determine whether the Trump administration can end protections for roughly 330,000 Haitian nationals or whether lower court rulings blocking the termination will stand.
Until the Court rules, Haitian TPS holders keep their status and their work authorization. A ruling is expected by late June or early July 2026.
What Protection Looks Like Right Now
On February 2, 2026, one day before the administration’s termination was set to take effect, Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a stay under the Administrative Procedure Act. That stay froze the termination and preserved existing status and work authorization for Haitian TPS holders.
The D.C. Circuit refused to lift it. On March 6, 2026, a 2-1 panel denied the government’s emergency motion, finding that the administration offered only “generalized assertions of injury” and had not identified any concrete harm from keeping things as they were. The majority found the equities tipped “decisively toward the plaintiffs,” pointing to the risk of detention, family separation, loss of work authorization, and exposure to violence in Haiti.
USCIS has issued guidance telling employers to treat existing Employment Authorization Documents as valid, with updated expiration dates for I-9 and E-Verify purposes. If you hold Haitian TPS, your EAD continues to be valid under that guidance while the Supreme Court case is pending.
Who Is Covered
About 330,000 Haitian nationals hold TPS, and roughly 200,000 of them are in the U.S. workforce. An estimated 50,000 U.S. citizen children depend on the income of a Haitian TPS parent. Haiti was first designated for TPS on January 21, 2010, after the earthquake, and the designation has been extended repeatedly. The Biden administration’s July 2024 extension was set to run 18 months, expiring February 3, 2026.
How the Termination Fight Started
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem took three consecutive actions against Haitian TPS in 2025:
- On February 24, 2025, she partially vacated the July 2024 extension, cutting it from 18 months to 12 and moving the expiration from February 3, 2026, to August 3, 2025.
- On July 1, 2025, she announced a formal termination of Haiti’s TPS designation, effective September 2, 2025.
- On November 28, 2025, after courts blocked the earlier actions, she issued a new termination notice with a February 3, 2026, effective date.
Each step drew a lawsuit.
What the Courts Have Ruled
Three cases have driven the outcome so far.
National TPS Alliance v. Noem
Filed February 19, 2025, in the Northern District of California, this case was brought by the National TPS Alliance and individual TPS holders and later amended to add four Haitian plaintiffs. The legal team included the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance.
The central argument was that no administration in the 35-year history of the TPS statute had ever claimed the power to “vacate” a prior designation. Judge Edward Chen agreed. On September 5, 2025, he granted partial summary judgment setting aside the partial vacatur of Haiti’s extension. On January 28, 2026, the Ninth Circuit affirmed in full, holding that the TPS statute contains “no explicit, implied, or inherent authority” for the Secretary to vacate a prior designation or extension. In a concurring opinion, Judge Mendoza wrote that the Secretary’s actions were “preordained and rooted in pretext” and reflected “animus on the basis of race and national origin.”
Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association v. Trump
Filed March 14, 2025, in the Eastern District of New York, this case challenged the partial vacatur and termination under the Administrative Procedure Act. On July 1, 2025, Judge Brian Cogan granted partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs, ruling that Secretary Noem lacked authority to partially vacate the designation. The court held that any termination could not take effect earlier than February 3, 2026. The government appealed on September 25, 2025.
Miot v. Trump
Filed as the November 2025 termination date approached, this D.C. case produced the February 2, 2026, stay from Judge Reyes that currently keeps Haitian TPS alive. Her ruling was the one the D.C. Circuit declined to disturb, and it is the ruling now under Supreme Court review.
The Legal Arguments
The Statute Does Not Allow Vacatur
The lead claim across the cases is that the TPS statute defines how to designate, extend, and terminate TPS but says nothing about undoing a prior Secretary’s decision midstream. The Ninth Circuit put it bluntly: the Secretary’s assertion of “raw, unchecked power to vacate a country’s TPS is irreconcilable with the plain language of the statute.”
Arbitrary and Capricious Decision-Making
Judge Reyes, ruling on the November 2025 termination notice, found that Secretary Noem “preordained” the outcome, reached conclusions about Haiti that contradicted the government’s own administrative record, and ignored the economic contributions of TPS holders, including $5.2 billion in annual tax revenue. She found that the Secretary “did not consult other agencies at all” before deciding, despite a statutory consultation requirement. By the government’s own filing, Noem consulted neither the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, the State Department’s Haiti desk, nor Congress.
Racial Discrimination
Several plaintiffs raised equal protection claims. Judge Reyes found it “substantially likely” that the decision was driven by “hostility to nonwhite immigrants,” and noted that Secretary Noem had terminated every TPS country designation that reached her, twelve out of twelve. Multiple courts cited President Trump’s 2024 campaign statements about Haitian immigrants as evidence of intent.
The Government’s Position
The administration’s lead defense is jurisdictional. The TPS statute states that “there is no judicial review of any determination” by the Secretary regarding TPS designations or terminations, and the government argues that language forecloses these suits entirely. It also argued that maintaining TPS was “contrary to the U.S. national interest,” citing public safety, national security, and border management. Every court to reach the jurisdictional question has rejected it, holding that while judges cannot second-guess the substance of a country-conditions finding, they can review whether the Secretary followed required procedures and stayed within her statutory authority.
The Supreme Court Case
On March 11, 2026, Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to stay Judge Reyes’s ruling and take up the merits directly, skipping further review at the D.C. Circuit. On March 16, 2026, the Court granted certiorari before judgment and set the case for expedited argument without lifting the district court’s stay. The Haiti dispute was consolidated with a parallel Syrian TPS case under the caption Mullin v. Doe.
Oral argument took place on April 29, 2026, and ran one hour and 45 minutes. A ruling is expected by late June or early July 2026. The Court declined to grant the same kind of emergency stay it had granted the government in October 2025 in the Venezuela TPS dispute, and the D.C. Circuit distinguished the Haiti case on the ground that the government had not identified the concrete diplomatic harm it had cited in the Venezuela context.
How Conditions in Haiti Figured Into the Rulings
The courts leaned heavily on the government’s own administrative record about Haiti. Criminal groups under the “Viv Ansanm” coalition control roughly 90 percent of Port-au-Prince. Between January and September 2025, armed groups killed at least 4,384 people, injured 1,899, and kidnapped 491. About 1.4 million people are internally displaced, nearly half of them children, and 5.7 million face acute food insecurity, with 600,000 in famine conditions. Roughly 40 percent of health facilities closed in 2025, more than 1,600 schools are shuttered, and no national elections have been held since 2016.
Judge Reyes concluded that Secretary Noem’s characterization of Haiti as facing merely “concerning” conditions was irreconcilable with the “perfect storm of suffering” documented in the record before her.
What to Watch
The pending Supreme Court decision in Mullin v. Doe is the next event that could change anything for Haitian TPS holders. Until it comes down, the February 2, 2026, stay controls, EADs remain valid under USCIS guidance, and status continues. If you hold Haitian TPS, keeping current documentation and monitoring USCIS announcements are the practical steps while the case is pending.