Haitian

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sounded ready Wednesday to rule that the Trump administration may end the temporary protection that has been granted to more than 1.3 million immigrants from troubled countries.

Congress in 1990 authorized Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for noncitizens who could not safely return home because their native country was wracked by war, violence or natural disasters. If those people passed a strict background check, they could stay and work legally in this country.

But President Trump came to office believing too many immigrants had been granted permission to enter and stay indefinitely.

Last year, his Department of Homeland Security moved to cancel the temporary humanitarian protection for immigrants from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, Honduras and Nicaragua. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians were consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices heard Wednesday.

Immigrant-rights advocates challenged those decisions as political and unjustified, and they won orders from federal judges that blocked the cancellations.

But Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court arguing the judges had overstepped their authority. They pointed to a provision in the 1990 law that bars “judicial review” of the government’s decision to end temporary protection for a particular country.

The justices ruled for the administration and set aside the lower court rulings in a series of 6-3 orders.

Faced with criticism over its brief and unexplained orders, the justices agreed to hear arguments on the TPS issue on the last day of oral arguments for this term.

But the ideological divide appeared to be unchanged.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said Congress had prohibited “judicial micromanagement” of these decisions, and none of six conservatives disagreed.

UCLA law professor Ahilan T. Arulanantham, representing several thousand Syrians, said the Homeland Security secretary had failed to consult the State Department, which says it is unsafe to travel there.

He said the government “reads the statute like it’s a blank check … to give the secretary the power to expel people who have done nothing wrong.”

Chicago attorney Geoffrey Pipoply, representing more than 350,000 Haitians, said the cancellations were driven by “the president’s racial animus toward non-white immigrants.”

The court’s three liberals argued the administration failed to follow the procedural steps required under the law. But that argument failed to gain traction.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband adopted two children from Haiti who are citizens. Like most of the conservatives, she asked few questions during the argument.

WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan moment, the House passed legislation Thursday that would extend temporary protections for Haitian immigrants, a long-shot effort fighting back against President Trump’s attempts to end the program.

The bill, pushed forward by House Democrats with a group of Republicans over the objections of the GOP leadership, would require a three-year extension of temporary protected status for Haitians by the Trump administration. That would allow hundreds of thousands of qualifying immigrants to remain in the United States without fear of deportation.

The vote was 224-204, drawing applause in the chamber. But it faces uncertainty in the Senate, and the Republican president would almost certainly seek to veto it.

“I know firsthand how important our Haitian neighbors are to our communities, to our civic life, to our culture, to our workforce, to our economy,” said Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who is co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus and represents one of the largest Haitian communities in the country.

During the debate, she recounted the number of Haitian immigrants working in healthcare, housing construction and other industries. Haitians with temporary legal status “are not the problem, quite the contrary, they are part of the solution,” she said.

Pressley has said deporting Haitians back to the troubled Caribbean country would be a “death sentence,” given the effects of natural disasters and gang violence. “Congress can do the right thing,” she said.

Ten Republicans, many from districts with large numbers of Haitian residents, joined all Democrats and one independent in voting for passage.

Congress tries to act before the Supreme Court does

The effort to help 350,000 Haitians living lawfully in the United States comes as the administration is working to end the temporary legal status for several groups, exposing them to deportation.

In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court is prepared to consider a fast-track case that would end the protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants in a challenge widely seen as threatening the broader program. The administration filed emergency appeals after lower courts stopped the immediate end of the program.

It is part of the administration’s efforts to strip certain immigrant groups of legal status as the White House works to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of conducting the largest mass deportation operation in history. Some 1.3 million people fleeing countries around the world have been granted temporary protected status in the U.S.

The protections for Haiti, first approved after a devastating 2010 earthquake, have been extended multiple times. The State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti “due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest.”

Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy organization, fought back tears as she described the fear of deportations coursing through the community.

“We are asking, where will you be? On the right side of history?” she said at a news conference outside the Capitol. “Or continuing to cause trauma to people who are asking for nothing other than safety and protection?”

Trump has described migrants from poorer countries in vulgar terms, and he has falsely accused Haitian migrants in Ohio of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

The conservative majority court has allowed the end of temporary legal status for a total of 600,000 people from Venezuela while lawsuits play out, leaving them to face potential deportation.

Lawmakers debate whether to help Haitians or stick with Trump

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) whose district includes Long Island’s Haitian community, said she promised constituents she would work to protect their status. She introduced the legislation with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York as soon as she took office last year.

“It’s cruel to expect Haitians to be forced to return to these deadly, dangerous conditions,” she said at a news conference. “Human lives are at risk.”

Lawler said there are differences of opinion on immigration policy, but that Haitian immigrants have become vital to his community and forcing them out would be unjust and unwise.

“They are small business owners, they are nurses, they are caregivers, they participate in our economy and take care of American citizens,” he said. “Congress has a responsibility to act.”

But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) decried the number of immigrants, including Haitians, who have entered the U.S., and cited Democratic efforts to halt funding for enforcement and deportation efforts.

“Make temporary permanent,” he said, “that’s their plan.”

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said the program was “backdoor amnesty” for foreigners.

To Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), the temporary status first granted under the Obama administration has become “an open-ended invitation” for immigrants to enter the country, including some illegally, and remain.

“The Trump administration has heeded the cries of the American people,” he said.

Using a discharge petition to force votes

The vote was the latest effort by House Democrats to maneuver past the Republican majority using a discharge petition — once a rare tool, but now used increasingly to form bipartisan coalitions.

The discharge petition process forces the bill to the House floor for consideration, powering past House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leaders. It was used to help pass legislation that required the Justice Department to release the files of the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.

Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and are typically able to swat back such efforts from Democrats. But Democrats and Republicans have formed bipartisan alliances to reach the majority needed on the discharge petitions.

Pressley’s effort to discharge the bill won support from four Republicans on the initial petition, and several more once it came to the floor vote.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

MIAMI — President Trump shared video of a deadly attack allegedly by a Haitian immigrant accused of bludgeoning a woman with a hammer at a Florida gas station, portraying the killing as justification for his administration’s mass deportation agenda.

Rolbert Joachin, 40, was arrested and charged with killing a woman on April 2 in Fort Myers, about 160 miles northwest of Miami. Authorities said the man was from Haiti and arrived in the U.S. in 2022. The woman who was killed was identified as a 51-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh and a mother of two adult daughters.

Trump, who posted the video late Thursday to his Truth Social account, has often sought to portray immigrants as bringing crime to the U.S., and the video emerging from the Florida attack presented him with a new, particularly graphic opportunity to do so. Trump also often paints Democrats and his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, as allowing in immigrants who posed a criminal or national security threat to the U.S.

Critics say the president unjustly paints all immigrants as criminals in an effort to bolster his immigration agenda, when studies have found that people living in the U.S. illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes.

“The video of her brutal slaying is one of the most vicious things you will ever see,” Trump said in his post, describing the man as an “animal.”

Graphic video captured woman’s killing

The woman who was killed was working as a clerk at the convenience store of the gas station, according to court documents. The killing happened outside the store and the man was arrested the same day.

In security camera footage of her killing posted on the Department of Homeland Security’s X feed, the man can be seen repeatedly slamming the hammer into a black vehicle parked in front of the gas station. Eventually a woman in black pants and a pink shirt comes out and appears to question him.

The man, wearing a yellow shirt and black shorts, walks up to the woman and immediately swings the hammer at her head. The woman falls down on the sidewalk in front of the gas station’s front doors. The man attacks the woman with the hammer multiple times before stepping over her unmoving body and walking away, out of the frame of the camera.

The victim was later identified in a police report as Nilufa Easmin, 51. A GoFundMe started by Samir Bahadur Syed, the President of the Bangladesh Association of Southwest Florida, described her as a “devoted mother who worked tirelessly to provide for her two young daughters.”

Syed said that Easmin arrived in the United States about three decades ago and resided in Miami and Palm Beach before moving to Florida’s west coast. She was a single mother, and her two daughters — one 23 years old and the other about 26 — were born in the U.S., Syed told the Associated Press.

He added that Easmin had been working at the convenience store for nearly five months and that she also held another job.

Fort Myers police said they responded to a report of a woman being hit with a hammer at a Chevron gas station. When officers arrived they found a woman on the ground with blood around her head and multiple cuts.

Officers later located Joachin walking on the street and took him into custody. The police said he has confessed. He was charged with murder and property damage and appeared in court on Wednesday. His arraignment is set for May 4.

An email message sent to the public defender listed in court records as Joachin’s lawyer seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Trump administration criticizes temporary deportation protections

Trump blamed Biden for granting the man temporary protection to stay in the U.S.

Kelly Walker, acting field office director for ICE enforcement and removal operations for the Miami field office, said during a news conference Friday that Joachin arrived in a “water vessel” near Key West, Fla., in August 2022. He was arrested and given Temporary Protected Status in 2023. That status was revoked this week, Walker said.

The Trump administration has harshly criticized the use of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which can be granted by an administration to citizens of a country going through turmoil or strife. Immigrants who qualify are allowed to stay in the U.S. and work for a temporary period, although Republican critics contend that the Biden administration misused its TPS authorities to broadly allow hundreds of thousands of people to stay in the country.

There are several lawsuits at the federal courts challenging Trump’s efforts to terminate TPS for more than one million people, including 350,000 Haitians. In March, a federal appeals court sided with a lower judge’s ruling against the end of temporary status for Haiti and the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on April 29.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration have often highlighted crimes committed by immigrants and created a website where one can look up people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the crimes they’ve committed in the U.S.

The administration often highlights “Angel Families” who have lost family members to crimes committed by immigrants.

On Thursday, ICE held an event marking the one-year anniversary of the reopening of an office dedicated to assisting those families, including emotional testimony from some of the surviving family members.

Salomon, Bellisle and Santana write for the Associated Press. Bellisle reported from Seattle and Santana from Washington.