Fr. Brad Mills, associate pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in San Diego, blesses an unidentified man as he celebrates Mass for Haitian migrants at a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, June 20, 2023. The shelter, which is called Villa Haitiana, is run by Franciscan sisters in Tijuana and houses about 180 people. (OSV News/David Maung)
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The U.S. Supreme Court announced late March 16 that it will hear oral arguments in April on whether the Trump administration can end a program temporarily shielding eligible Haitians living in the U.S. from deportation.
The Trump administration on March 11 asked the high court to pause a ruling by a federal judge that barred the government from ending the program for Haitians, a move opposed by Catholic bishops as "not realistic" given the turmoil in their country of origin.
The request for emergency relief from U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argued that numerous challenges related to the Trump administration's efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for several nations "cry out for immediate resolution."
The Trump administration also seeks to end TPS for Syrian nationals, and the Supreme Court said it will hear oral arguments in that case as well.
The program, sometimes called TPS, authorized the U.S. government to grant protection from deportation to people from countries experiencing dangerous conditions such as war, disaster, or other unrest.
Its uncertain future impacts more than 350,000 Haitians, a typically Catholic population, who are living and working in the U.S. legally under the program.
In a statement issued in response to the administration's attempt to end the program for Haiti, Bishop Brendan Cahill, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration, and Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, chairman of the USCCB's Committee on International Justice and Peace, noted that the federal government has recognized the extreme risks to life in Haiti. They pointed out the State Department has given Haiti a Level 4 travel advisory, its highest level, due to "life-threatening risks" that include kidnapping, terrorist activity, and civil unrest, and that the Federal Aviation Administration likewise prohibits any flights from the U.S. to Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.
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"There is simply no realistic opportunity for the safe and orderly return of people to Haiti at this time," they noted.
Catholic social teaching on immigration balances three interrelated principles — the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain their lives and those of their families, the right of a country to regulate its borders and control immigration, and a nation's duty to regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
"The Trump Administration still has the opportunity to do the right thing — to safeguard human life, to uphold the law, and to promote greater stability for people in this country and beyond," the bishops said. "TPS was created by Congress with these very goals in mind, and the ongoing conditions in Haiti are precisely the sort warranting TPS."
In January, a federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration acted illegally when it ended legal protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Venezuela and Haiti, both predominantly Catholic countries, to remain in the United States without risk of deportation due to dangerous conditions in their respective homelands.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that found Kristi Noem, the outgoing Homeland Security secretary, acted unlawfully when she ended TPS for Venezuelans. They also upheld a lower court's ruling that Noem exceeded her authority in ending TPS early for Haiti.
However, the ruling did not have an immediate effect for Venezuelan citizens. The Supreme Court in October allowed Noem's bid to end TPS to remain in effect while the larger court battle continued.
