By Nate Raymond
March 7 (Reuters) - A divided U.S. appeals court has refused to let the Trump administration revoke legal protections that allow more than 350,000 Haitians to live and work in the U.S., and avoid being returned to their gang-violence-stricken country.
A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit late on Friday rejected the administration's bid to pause a February 2 ruling that blocked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from ending Haiti's Temporary Protected Status.
TPS is a humanitarian program that shields eligible migrants from deportation and allows them to work.
Under outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the department has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, arguing the program was never intended to serve as a "de facto amnesty."
The administration had asked the D.C. Circuit to stay U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes' February order while it appeals. Her decision came in a class-action lawsuit brought by Haitians seeking to prevent DHS from exposing them to deportation.
Reyes found that Noem's November move to end the Haitians' legal protections likely violated TPS termination procedures and the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.
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The administration on appeal noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had twice allowed it to end TPS for Venezuelans.
But U.S. Circuit Judges Florence Pan and Brad Garcia, both appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, distinguished the cases and said Haitians sent home would "be vulnerable to violence amid a 'collapsing rule of law' and lack access to life-sustaining medical care."
U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, dissented, saying the case and the earlier Supreme Court litigation involving Venezuelans were "the legal equivalent of fraternal, if not identical, twins."
A DHS spokesperson said in a statement that the administration would take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Temporary means temporary, and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench," the spokesperson said.
Haitians were first granted TPS in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. The U.S. has repeatedly renewed the designation, most recently under the Biden administration in July 2024.
At that time, DHS cited Haiti's "simultaneous economic, security, political, and health crises", driven by gangs and the absence of a functioning government.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Mark Potter and Kevin Buckland)