You Won’t Believe the Righteous Language This Judge Used Against DHS

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to upend temporary protected status for more than 350,000 Haitians.

In an unsparing 83-page decision issued late Monday, Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., formally denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s attempts to terminate the TPS program entirely.

Reyes didn’t miss the opportunity to completely pick apart DHS and its leader, Secretary Kristi Noem, for doggedly pursuing a newfangled, anti-immigrant agenda even when it runs afoul of U.S. law.

Reyes noted that Noem does not have the authority to unravel TPS, which was created by Congress through the Immigration Act of 1990. The judge further determined that Noem’s arguments for ending the program were not only flawed but also fundamentally unacceptable since they failed to address the economic component of the program.

“She ignores altogether the billions Haitian TPS holders contribute to the economy,” Reyes wrote.

From the very first words of the ruling, Reyes frames Noem as the polar opposite of America’s first leader, George Washington, pitting one of her vitriolic tweets against a letter in which Washington insisted that the U.S. must receive “the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.”

“Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight,” Reyes wrote. “She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable.

“She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured,” the judge continued. “This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them.”

Ultimately, Reyes concluded, Noem does not have the law or facts on her side and, as a result, has done little more than “pound the table”—which, in this case, is the social media platform X.

“Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants,” Reyes stated. “Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”