A decision rendered Monday by US District Court Judge Anna Reyes that blocks— at least temporarily— the Trump regime’s plan to strip 350,000 Haitian people now living in the US of their legal status and ability to work is a thrill to read. Judge Reyes masterfully details all of the legal arguments for why the Haitian TPS order should be stayed— most of it “letter of the law” failures of Secretary Kristi Noem to adhere to clearly outlined requirements necessary to rescind the group’s status.
But she also sand-blasts this filthy administration’s moral corruption and lays bare the white supremacist impulses that animate the regime’s ravenous purge of Black and brown people, including those who are living here lawfully.
In one particularly damning section of her 83-page ruling, Reyes turns Trump’s own hateful rhetoric back on him like a gaudy West Wing mirror smeared by his own vomit.
“To start,” she writes, “he has repeatedly invoked racist tropes of national purity, declaring that ‘illegal immigrants’—a category he wrongly assigns to Haitian TPS holders—are ‘poisoning the blood’ of America. He has, Plaintiffs allege, complained that recently admitted nonwhite Africans would ‘never ‘go back to their huts’ in Africa.’ He has complained further that nonwhite immigration is an ‘invasion,’ creating a ‘dumping ground’ that is ‘destroying our country.’ He has described immigrants as ‘not people,’ ‘snakes,’ and ‘garbage,’ who have ‘bad genes,’ He has also stated that he prefers immigrants from ‘nice’—predominantly white—countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark over immigrants from ‘shithole countries.’” The judge duly notes that while Trump and Noem have unleashed their purge of non-whites, they have given “special priority” to white South Africans as “refugees.”
“Taken together,” she writes, “the record strongly suggests that Secretary Noem’s decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS designation was motivated, at least in part, by racial animus.”
The jurist concludes her decision thusly: “There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).
“Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”
Reyes’ ruling will be challenged by Trump’s attorneys and will, most likely, land in the Supreme Court. But, as it stands, her powerful arguments offer new hope that this wicked regime’s white power agenda will be permanently crushed by jurists who lean on the US Constitution rather than failed Confederate-era tropes to guide American public policy.
Donald Trump is a virulent racist. His sycophants— JD Vance and Kristi Noem at the lead— who’ve parroted his hateful slurs and attempted to expel Black and brown peoples— our neighbors— are just as vile. It’s a great pleasure, then, to see and hear patriotic Americans and exceptional jurists such as Anna Reyes and Fred Biery put them in their places.
-Bill Forry
