Office of the
Illinois Attorney General
Kwame Raoul

Chicago – Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a coalition of 18 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in support of a challenge to the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to terminate Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation and strip legal immigration status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians living and working in the United States.

“Haitian Temporary Protected Status holders have been forced to flee their home country due to conflicts and environmental disasters,” Raoul said. “I am the proud son of Haitian immigrants, and I know firsthand that Haitians make key contributions to our state and national economies. TPS helps them contribute to their new communities while working toward a better life for their families. Removing their protected status would throw their lives into uncertainty and chaos. I join my colleagues in asking the court to extend these protections.”

TPS is a humanitarian immigration status created by Congress to protect foreign nationals who cannot safely return to their home country because of war, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. TPS allows recipients to live and work in the United States as long as their home country has a TPS designation. Haitian immigrants have been eligible for TPS since 2010, when a devastating earthquake hit the country. The protections have repeatedly been extended due to unsafe conditions in Haiti, including widespread violence, homelessness and starvation.  

On July 1, the Trump administration sought to formally terminate Haiti’s TPS designation without any evidence that the dangerous conditions in Haiti had improved, and despite the fact that the U.S. State Department continues to classify Haiti as a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” country — its highest risk designation.  

In their brief, filed in Miot, et al. v. Trump, et al. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Raoul and the coalition argue that unlawfully terminating Haiti’s TPS designation would separate families, damage economies, deplete workforces, increase health care costs, and harm public health and safety. Across the country, thousands of TPS recipients provide important public services as teachers, health care providers, entrepreneurs, construction workers and more. If stripped of their legal status, TPS recipients would be forced to either face life in uncertainty and vulnerability without legal protections or return to a country that continues to have exceedingly dangerous conditions that pose an ongoing risk of violence and human rights abuses. 

TPS-eligible Haitians contribute $4.4 billion annually to the U.S. economy. Sixty-nine percent of Haitian immigrants aged 16 and older were members of the civilian labor force in 2022, with high rates of participation in health care support and service industries. Furthermore, a recent estimate found that 75,000 TPS-eligible Haitians work in industries experiencing labor shortages.  

In submitting their brief, Raoul and the coalition are asking the court to grant the plaintiffs’ motion to postpone the effective date of the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation, which would protect the hundreds of thousands of Haitians legally in the United States under the program while the litigation proceeds.  

Joining Raoul in submitting this brief are the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.