Attorney General Bonta Urges Court to Block Unlawful Termination of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status While Case Proceeds

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta yesterday co-led a coalition of 18 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief opposing the Trump Administration’s efforts to terminate Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS). On November 28, 2025, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Federal Register notice “newly terminating” TPS for Haiti, effective February 3, 2026. On February 2, 2026, Judge Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling postponing the effective date of the Trump Administration’s termination of TPS for Haitians. The Trump Administration has since asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to stay that postponement. If that stay is granted, hundreds of thousands of Haitian TPS holders, nearly one quarter of all TPS recipients nationwide, would lose their legal ability to live and work in the United States, despite ongoing dangerous conditions in their home country. In the amicus brief filed in Lesly Miot v. Trump in the D.C. Circuit, the attorneys general urge the court to deny the Trump Administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional request to terminate TPS for Haiti, and to keep the district court’s postponement order in place while the appeal is pending to avert immediate and irreparable harm to families, economies and workforces, public revenues, public health, and public safety.

“The Trump Administration’s continued targeting of immigrant communities must end now. Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status holders came to the U.S. to seek refuge from natural disasters, violence, and instability. They are here lawfully working, raising families, and strengthening our communities and economy every day,” said Attorney General Bonta. “TPS holders are integral to this country. Forcibly removing that protection will destabilize families, weaken economies, and cripple community health and safety. For decades, California has opened its doors to them, and we will continue to stand in their defense to ensure their lawful status is not unlawfully revoked.”

TPS is a critical humanitarian tool and part of the United States’ long history of providing safe haven to those fleeing armed conflict, natural disasters, or other crises that make the return of TPS holders to their home countries unsafe. The Amici States are home to hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants, who are able to live and work in the United States because of TPS. Many Haitian TPS holders have lived here for a decade or more and have started families and businesses, bought homes, and significantly contributed to their communities. To revoke these long-standing protections would force families who have established their lives in the U.S. to return to unstable and dangerous conditions. Despite DHS acknowledging in the November 28, 2025, termination notice that conditions in Haiti are “concerning” and that many people there “have been forced to flee their homes and are internally displaced due to escalating violence,” the Secretary of Homeland Security terminated Haiti’s TPS designation. The U.S. State Department continues to classify Haiti as a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” country, its highest risk designation reserved for severe threats.

In the amicus brief, the coalition explains that allowing the termination to take effect would inflict widespread, irreparable harm on Haitian TPS holders and the Amici States, including:

• Families — countless of whom include U.S. citizen children — who will suffer trauma and hardship from unnecessary and forced separation.
• The economy, which is enriched by the employment, entrepreneurship, and contributions of TPS holders, with $4.4 billion annually contributed by TPS Haitians alone.
• Public revenues, which are enhanced by the taxes contributed by TPS holders, including an estimated $19 billion alone in property taxes.
• Public health, depriving many Haitian TPS holders and their U.S. citizen families of their employer-sponsored health insurance.
• Public safety, which will be damaged by making Haitian TPS holders less likely to report crime. 

Attorney General Bonta is committed to protecting the nearly 10 million immigrants who call California home. In November 2025, Attorney General Bonta co-led an amicus brief opposing the Trump Administration’s termination of TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians. He has repeatedly supported challenges to the early termination of the TPS designation for Haitians and Venezuelans, and defended pathways for legal immigration for those fleeing dangerous conditions in their home countries. Attorney General Bonta has secured permanent injunctions blocking the Trump Administration’s attempts to illegally condition homeland security and transportation funding on state participation in immigration enforcement. And he has temporarily blocked the Trump Administration’s efforts to impose cruel new restrictions on access to public benefit programs based on immigration status while litigation continues.

Attorney General Bonta co-led the filing of today’s brief, alongside Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and New York Attorney General Letitia James. They are joined by attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.