As the Homeland Security Department weighed whether to terminate deportation protections for more than 350,000 Haitians last year, agency officials repeatedly reached out to the State Department for its recommendation.
It was a crucial step — the department is required to consult with “appropriate agencies” to review conditions in foreign countries before terminating Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program that is meant to help migrants who cannot return to their countries because of unsafe conditions.
But newly released internal emails and documents indicate that the Homeland Security Department decided to terminate the protections last June without obtaining input from the State Department, calling into question whether the department followed the required legal process.
The question of whether the Trump administration followed the procedures laid out in federal law is also central to a case now before the Supreme Court. A decision, which is expected to determine whether the administration can immediately end the humanitarian protections, is anticipated by the end of the month.
The ruling could have sweeping implications for about a million migrants from more than a dozen countries whose temporary protections the Trump administration has sought to terminate. The push to end T.P.S. programs is a key part of the administration’s immigration crackdown, which has recently focused on rooting out people it believes should be stripped of their status and expelled from the country.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the Haitians took the unusual step of asking the justices to dismiss the case and send it back to the lower courts for further proceedings.
Citing the newly released documents, the lawyers contend that the administration falsely asserted in public statements that the homeland security secretary had consulted with the State Department, “when in fact she had not.” They said the justices did not have a chance to consider the communications during their deliberations because they had surfaced only recently, as part of a separate court case. For the justices to make a decision now, without all the relevant information, would be premature, they said.
“Contrary to the administration’s public statements, the State Department in reality played no role in the decision to terminate, upending more than three decades of established practice and contrary to the law,” said Geoffrey Pipoly, a lawyer who argued the case on behalf of the Haitians. “We hope that the court recognizes that these are just the facts that have come out so far — there may well be more facts to come that show even more illegality.”
In a statement, the Homeland Security Department said the “environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.” Asked whether its officials consulted with the State Department before terminating T.P.S. for Haitians, the department pointed to a June 27, 2025, news release explaining that the homeland security secretary at the time, Kristi Noem, had made the decision based on the department’s own “review of the conditions in Haiti and in consultation with the Department of State.”
The State Department did not respond to questions about whether it had provided a recommendation at that time. “T.P.S. is a temporary protection, not permanent benefit,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
In court, the Justice Department has pointed to a response that officials received from the State Department months later, though lawyers for the Haitians say that it was not sufficient and that the administration’s actions are inextricably linked.
The documents came to light weeks after the Supreme Court arguments in April. The Homeland Security Department had provided them to the plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit involving the National TPS Alliance, an organization that says its mission is to defend T.P.S. programs. Attorneys for the plaintiffs shared the documents with the lawyers in the Supreme Court case. They also provided additional documents to The New York Times.
“Courts must rule on the law and facts,” said Emi MacLean, an attorney with the A.C.L.U. of Northern California and counsel for the plaintiffs in the National TPS Alliance case. “Here the facts indicate something very different from what this administration has publicly stated.”
Haitians first received protections in 2010 after a devastating earthquake. The program was extended several times after the country struggled to fully recover and its last elected president was assassinated in 2021. Since then, Haiti has grappled with gang violence, political instability and food shortages. The Trump administration first said that it would end the program in late 2017, but was blocked by lower courts.
The internal emails show that homeland security officials sought the State Department’s input in May of last year ahead of Ms. Noem’s early-June deadline to make a decision on extending Haiti’s status. Nearly a month later, though, the recommendation still had not come.
“State recommendation for Haiti T.P.S. has not come in despite of many outreach,” a homeland security deputy assistant secretary wrote in an email on June 2, 2025, adding that a recommendation “would be helpful to have.”
A later email indicated that the Homeland Security Department did not receive a recommendation from the State Department before deciding to terminate the protections.
“I can share that S1 recently elected to terminate Haiti without country conditions from D.O.S.,” a homeland security project manager wrote in the June 13, 2025, email, referring to the secretary.
“Good point about Haiti,” an acting chief of the regulatory coordination division replied.
The documents showed various iterations of a memo detailing the department’s decision, which also said the department did not receive input from the State Department in the days leading up to the decision deadline.
In what appears to be the final decision memo, dated June 3, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recommended ending the protections based on a review of current conditions in Haiti and an analysis indicating that allowing the migrants to stay was “contrary to the U.S. national interest.”
“As of June 2, 2025, U.S.C.I.S. has not received input from the Department of State on Haiti’s T.P.S. designation,” says the memo, which Ms. Noem signed two days later.
Earlier versions of the memo showed that the agency initially recommended automatically extending the protections before the department decided to terminate them.
One version said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services presented “a recommendation of ‘No Decision/Automatic Extension’” based on a review of current conditions in Haiti.
But the next iteration in the filing crosses out “No Decision” and replaces it with “Terminate.” It also crosses out several lines detailing the proliferation of criminal groups and a “significant increase in gang-related violence” in Haiti. Another line about how the Haitian National Police was “critically understaffed” and “largely ineffective against gang activities” was also crossed out.
The documents provide insight into the internal deliberations the department made before trying last June to terminate T.P.S. for Haiti, a decision that was later blocked by a federal judge. The department issued another notice terminating the protections in November, and it is currently under consideration by the Supreme Court.
This time, citing the litigation, a homeland security senior counselor had asked for the State Department’s views on conditions in Haiti, according to an email made public earlier this year. In response, a State Department official, Spencer Chretien, did not specifically mention conditions on the ground, but said the department believed that “there would be no foreign policy concerns with respect to a change in the T.P.S. status of Haiti.”
The Trump administration has defended that response as a sufficient consultation. But lawyers for the Haitians argue that it does not meet the legal standards for a proper consultation.
At the Supreme Court in April, the justices appeared closely divided over whether the administration had followed the steps in the statute to terminate T.P.S. for Haitians and, separately, for about 6,000 Syrians whose case is also pending before the court.
D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, told the justices that the law makes clear that courts cannot second-guess the government’s decision to extend or end the protections. The statute, he said, does not specify the content of the consultation with the State Department and directs the secretary only to review country conditions after the consultation.
In their filing on Tuesday urging the Supreme Court to punt and dismiss the case, lawyers for the Haitians said the justices did not have all the facts they needed to make an informed decision. They noted that the justices had agreed to fast-track the matter before lower-court judges had fully developed or considered the evidence at issue.
The Trump administration, they said, had asked the justices to intervene with “such haste that new facts continue to emerge” in separate litigation in the lower courts.
With about two weeks remaining in the court’s term, the justices have cast their tentative votes and the majority opinion in the case has almost certainly been written. The court will presumably take notice of the new filing, but it would be rare for the justices’ votes to shift based on new information submitted at this late stage.
Miriam Jordan and Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
www.nytimes.com