A Boston-based civil rights advocacy organization is suing the Trump administration over its efforts to ultimately revoke legal status for many Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants. Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a lawsuit Monday that’s seeking to halt that change, challenging Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s authority to vacate extensions of temporary protected status.
It’s the first challenge to the new Trump administration’s ability to curtail Haitians’ temporary protected status.
Temporary protected status, or TPS, allows immigrants whose home countries are considered unsafe to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation. They must apply for the program and be here before specific dates to qualify and, under President Joe Biden, the status had been extended into 2026 for Haitians and Venezuelans.
“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,” the complaint reads .
The suit is brought on behalf of three immigrant advocacy organizations — Haitians Americans United, Inc, Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts and UndocuBlack Network — as well as four affected individuals. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela could lose their legal status if TPS is vacated.
“It would affect us greatly — in reality, it would be terrifying for my mother to lose her job due to the policy change,” Gustavo Doe, one of those individuals, told GBH News Monday in Spanish. GBH News is using a pseudonym due to his fears of deportation.
Gustavo Doe says he arrived from Venezuela in 2023 after facing threats due to his outspoken opposition to the government corruption.
Since coming to the United States, he was in a car accident, becoming nearly deaf and using a wheelchair for a while.
Under his temporary protected status, he has been able to obtain health insurance that covers medical procedures related to the accident. His mother, also a TPS holder, works at a supermarket and cares for him.
Gustavo Doe said the medical system in Venezuela has collapsed, and there isn’t the technology or the medical supplies to get the help he needs.
“I hope the final decision includes keeping TPS for a long time. The conditions in Venezuela have not improved at all — the political, socioeconomic, and humanitarian situations are the same as a few years ago,” he said.
Sydney and Marlene Doe are two other plaintiffs from Haiti. The couple came to the United States in 2018 and are now homeowners. Sydney Doe is an accountant who owns his own business, and Marlene became a Certified Nursing Assistant who assisted elderly patients during the pandemic. They have two children, including a junior in high school with TPS, and a six-year-old son who is a U.S. citizen.
“Our lawsuit will make clear that presidents do not have unchecked power to dismantle humanitarian protections at will, such as TPS,” said Mirian Albert, senior attorney for Lawyers for Civil Rights. She said the plaintiffs are “fearful for their families because of the situations that forced them to leave their home countries to come to the U.S. to begin with.”
Haiti has had TPS designation since 2010, and Venezuela since 2021 due to political violence, natural disaster, lack of functioning government and basic societal infrastructure. Noem moved up the end of Venezuela’s TPS designation from October 2026 to as early as next month and Haiti’s from February 2026 to this August.
In 2018, the Trump administration attempted to end TPS for Haiti, alongside other countries, but was blocked by the courts after legal challenges, including one brought by Lawyers for Civil Rights .
“The community is anxious about the sudden loss of legal status, the possibility of facing deportation to unstable conditions in Haiti, and potential difficulties in finding alternative legal pathways in the U.S,” said Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, founder of True Alliance Center.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t reply to request for comment. In the order to vacate Haiti’s temporary protected status extension, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that the program had been abused and exploited for decades. “President Trump and Secretary Noem are returning TPS to its original status: temporary,” the spokesperson wrote.
The Temporary Protected Status statute does not allow any president to revoke an extension that has already been granted.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance spread baseless claims that Haitians immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite city officials telling media there were no reports of this occurring. The Haitian community and allies in Massachusetts decried the rhetoric as racist , dangerous and xenophobic.
“We all deserve a just and fair future — one that is not dictated by racism or dishonesty, nor one where our lives are treated as a gamble,” Patrice Lawrance, executive director of UndocuBlack Network, said in a statement.
The first hearing in the case has not yet been scheduled.
