Haitian immigrants are suing President Donald Trump and officials with the Department of Homeland Security. They claim racism was part of the reason why the US government ended the program that enabled them to legally live and work in the US following disasters in their own nation.
The lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Thursday, is one of several legal challenges nationwide against the decision made by the Trump administration to close down Temporary Protected Status for immigrant refugees from Haiti, El Salvador, Sudan, and Nicaragua. The latest lawsuit will attempt to show that subjecting approximately 60,000 Haitian immigrants to deportation will cause major harm to the Haitian-American community.
There are a dozen plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including Haiti Liberte, a weekly Haitian newspaper based in New York, where one of their leading journalists may be forced to go back to Haiti because of the decision to end Temporary Protected Status. In Miami, Family Action Network Movement Inc, an advocacy group, could also lose many activists due to deportation, and has given greater assistance to affected Haitians, forcing resources to be diverted away from core services like access to health care and adult education.
The lawsuit alleges that officials with the Department of Homeland Security broke protocol when deciding whether protections given to Haitian immigrants after the 2010 earthquake should be renewed, and maintained stereotypes about immigrant and black crimes.