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Boston-based civil rights group sues Trump administration for TPS rollback
Lawyers for Civil Rights was the first organization to file a complaint against the administration for upending temporary protection status.
A civil rights organization in Boston filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration for its order to rollback protection orders for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants in the United States.
Lawyers for Civil Rights filed its complaint on March 3, which is the first to stop the administration from upending temporary protection status, or TPS, that tens of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. currently hold.
“None of these actions are legal,” the organization wrote in the complaint. “The TPS statute does not authorize the Secretary to pull the rug out from under vulnerable TPS recipients and rescind an extension that has already been granted; she simply has no statutory authority to do so.”
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Kristi Noem, the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, signed an order that reversed a Biden administration decision to extend TPS by 18 months. Haitian TPS holders would have been able to stay in the U.S. until next February, but now are permitted to stay until this August. For those from Venezuela, the date moved from next October to next month.
The lawsuit — filed on behalf of Haitian-Americans United, the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, the UnDocuBlack Network, and four affected individuals — states that the decision is not based on the understanding of the protection order but rather “conclusions motivated by racial bias and improper political influence.”
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Ciro Valiente, a spokesperson for the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, said the people that the organization serves were feeling an “overwhelming sense of fears and uncertainty” when the news initially broke in late February.
“Many of our members have built their lives here, working and contributing to our community,” he said. “They fled a humanitarian crisis and political persecution and now they face a terrifying prospect of being forced back into those same conditions.”
Valiente said there are an estimated 12,890 people in Massachusetts with Venezuelan ancestry, with two-thirds being foreign born. There was no estimate to how many people have TPS.
When the announcement came, the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts connected with Lawyers for Civil Rights and other community organizations to explore its legal options, Valiente said.
“We believe that the lawsuit isn’t just about stopping an unjust decision, it’s about protecting human dignity and ensuring that Venezuelans who have sought refuge in the U.S. aren’t thrown back into danger,” he said.
In both Venezuela and Haiti, political and social unrest have plagued the countries for years. The complaint states that TPS was designed to help immigrants flee such countries in crises. Venezuela was designated as a TPS country in 2021 and Haiti in 2010.
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The complaint states the Homeland Security secretary is not allowed to enforce these “vacaturs” for countries that have already been granted extensions.
“We will not stay silent. We will not stay quiet,” Valiente said. “We will keep fighting for the dignity of our people.”
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