President Donald Trump speaks alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a roundtable about antifa in the State Dining Room at the White House Oct. 8, 2025 (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images).
The U.S. Supreme Court should drop its review of a district court ruling that blocked the Trump administration from terminating temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitians because the government has been lying about the issues from the beginning, the plaintiffs who won the courtroom reprieve say.
On Tuesday, attorneys representing a class of Haitians who have been in the country since 2021 accused former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and other DHS officials of intentionally ignoring federal law when trying to end the program.
The plaintiffs say they have proof of such "deliberate" misrepresentations — and anticipate additional proof is coming.
"Recently disclosed DHS documents contain such evidence, and yet-to-be disclosed documents likely do too," the motion reads. "But because discovery is still ongoing, the full extent of such evidence remains unknown. Until discovery is complete, the Court lacks a firm factual foundation on which to judge the merits of respondents' claims."
In the underlying litigation, the plaintiffs sued over "preordained" efforts to end TPS that began in June 2025. The ensuing lawsuit was premised on alleged violations of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Fifth Amendment right to equal protection.
But terminating a TPS designation is highly conditional. Under the relevant statute, the DHS secretary can only do so "after consultation with appropriate agencies of the Government."
And that consultation is precisely what Noem did not do, the plaintiffs say. But she did lie about said consultation, the motion argues.
"Consistent with that statutory requirement, the July 1 termination notice says that the Secretary determined that Haiti's TPS designation should be terminated 'after consulting with appropriate U.S. Government agencies,'" the motion reads.
That's a problem for at least two other reasons, the plaintiffs say.
First, the Trump administration has previously told the nation's high court that it did not understand how, exactly, this statutory condition had to be fulfilled. This purported admission of confusion was made during oral arguments in a different case about ending TPS designations for Syrian immigrants, the brief notes.
Second, the Trump administration actually did understand how, exactly, the statutory condition in question had to be fulfilled.
"Indeed, newly obtained DHS documents show that — contrary to the position that the government has taken in this court — DHS understood that satisfaction of the statutory consultation requirement requires the Secretary to receive '[c]ountry conditions and recommendation' from the State Department," the motion goes on.
Still, the plaintiffs' overarching point is that the government knew what to do, did not do it, and then lied about doing it.
"[N]ewly obtained DHS emails make clear that there was no such consultation before the Secretary's June 4 decision to terminate Haiti's TPS designation," the motion reads.
The plaintiffs summarize those emails:
On June 2, one DHS official told other DHS officials that the "State recommendation for Haiti TPS has not come in." A later email—in which one [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] official told another that the Secretary "elected to terminate Haiti without" receiving any information regarding "country conditions from DOS"—confirms that the Secretary's June 4 termination decision departed from established practice, and that the July 1 termination notice misrepresented whether the State Department had been consulted.
Moreover, the plaintiffs say the Trump administration was not just papering over a lapse in its due diligence required by federal law. Instead, deception was the plan from the outset, the motion argues.
"Confirming that the misrepresentation was deliberate rather than inadvertent, the DHS press release announcing the termination likewise stated that '[t]he Secretary's decision' was made 'in consultation with the Department of State,'" the filing continues.
The plaintiffs also say that Noem's apparent departures from the law and past practices were a poorly kept secret, if that, within DHS itself.
"Recently obtained DHS documents also show that agency officials knew that the Secretary's stated reason for terminating Haiti's TPS designation — U.S. national interest — was unprecedented," the motion goes on. "Confirming that no TPS designation had ever before been terminated based on U.S. national interest, one official told another that 'Haiti is the first one.'"
The case before the justices came by way of an application for a stay submitted by the federal government in March. The plaintiffs won an administrative stay of Noem's efforts under the APA in February.
Now, the plaintiffs say the Supreme Court should reject the pending application until the facts are fully hashed out before the lower court.
"The continuing disclosure of relevant evidence even after oral argument suggests that the 'circumstances' of this case 'were not fully apprehended at the time certiorari was granted,'" the motion continues. "It is therefore appropriate to dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted."