Lawyers ask Supreme Court to toss Haiti TPS case, citing newly released documents
Attorneys representing Haitian and Syrian TPS holders have asked the Supreme Court to block the Trump administration's effort to end TPS protections, citing "newly disclosed documents" they say prove that the Department of Homeland Security did not properly consult with the Department of State and knowingly relied on false statements when it decided to end protections for over 350,000 Haitians.
DHS last year moved to end Haitians' Temporary Protected Status, which provides work authorization and protection from deportation to people whose home countries are deemed unsafe.
The Supreme Court could issue a ruling in the case as early as Thursday.
The lawyers' move appears to be a last-minute effort to have the case dismissed before a possible ruling that could have massive repercussions for all TPS holders across the country.
The attorneys say that documents released as part of a different case show that as late as May 29, 2025, DHS recommended that there be an automatic extension of TPS status based on the "recent escalation of violence" and "the rapidly evolving nature of the security environment" in Haiti.
The recommendation was written in a draft decision memo that also said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had consulted with the State Department, but that it had not "provided an assessment of conditions nor a recommendation to inform the consultation requirement."
Another document shows that Joseph Edlow, who is now the USCIS director, rejected the draft memo the following day and instructed staff to "address edits given verbally."
"Within hours, those edits resulted in significant substantive changes. In contrast to the earlier draft, which had recommended that Haiti's TPS designation be extended, the new draft recommended that it be '[t]erminated,'" attorneys said in their request to the Supreme Court.
On July 1, 2025, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the agency had determined on June 4, 2025, that Haiti's TPS designation would be terminated after finding, in consultation with the State Department and other agencies, that conditions in Haiti had improved.
"These newly disclosed documents reveal that the July 1 termination notice, the immediate precursor to the action at issue here, relied on a knowingly false statement -- namely, the assertion that the Secretary had consulted with the Department of State when in fact she had not," the attorneys wrote.
"The documents also reveal that the July 1 termination notice was based on an unprecedented rationale and published only after a political appointee issued an unusual eleventh-hour verbal directive instructing career officials to abandon their recommendation that Haiti's TPS designation be extended," the attorneys argued.
The government has argued that, regardless of the circumstances, the DHS secretary's discretionary decision to revoke TPS can't be reviewed or second guessed by the courts.
A DHS spokesperson, responding to the claims made in the court filing, referred ABC News to the DHS press release from late June 2025 that announced the termination of Haitians' TPS following consultation with the State Department.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
ABC News' Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.
