Feds To Appeal Brooklyn Block On Trump Plan To Deport Haitians

BROOKLYN, NY — The federal government will fight a Brooklyn court ruling blocking the Trump administration from forcibly deporting 59,000 Haitian immigrants who were granted protected status after they fled a national disaster, court records show.

U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue filed a notice of appeal in Brooklyn Federal Court Thursday in the Saget et al v. Trump case, which pitted immigration advocates against President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security and the recent termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants.

"We thought the decision was a thorough, careful and persuasive analysis of the facts of the law that were proven at trial," the plaintiff's attorney Howard Roin, told Patch. "We're gonna work hard to see [the opinion] is affirmed."

The appeal was filed nearly two months after U.S. District Judge William Kuntz issued an April 11 nationwide injunction that blocked the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, court records show.

Temporary Protected Status allows immigrants from foreign countries experiencing war, natural disasters or other upheavals to stay in the United States for a certain period of time.

Kuntz' ruling came after a weeklong trial in January, where attorneys argued the Trump administration's plans to end temporary protected status for immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador are unlawful because they were motivated by racial prejudice.

Homeland Security officials defended the policy — in five lawsuits filed across the nation — by arguing that dangerous conditions no longer exist in the cited countries.

But the Brooklyn judge's 150-page ruling raised concerns that DHS did not did not conduct a thorough investigation into conditions in Haiti and that the agency was influenced by racial animus within the White House, LexisNexis reported at the time.

And a California federal judge who also blocked the policy said it posed "serious questions as to whether a discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor," the Washington Post reported in October.

The judge cited President Trump's statements that Haitians "all have AIDS" and live in a "s---hole" country.

Patch editor Noah Manskar contributed to this report.